


by the courage of our hearts

by maquina



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Character Death, Drift Compatibility, Ghost Drifting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4567575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maquina/pseuds/maquina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean has only one test to complete before he becomes a Ranger, but an equipment malfunction instead leads him to Armin, the last person he expected to be Drift Compatible with. However, this happy accident is the work of a very human enemy that threatens to undermine the entire fight against the real monsters, and their rise as Jaeger pilots puts them in more danger than ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by the courage of our hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is part of the Jearmin Summer Splash 2015 - a team based writing competition!  
> Prompt: "The Eleventh Hour" or "at the last possible moment"  
> Team: AU  
> Word Count: 24k+
> 
> I've wanted to write a Pacific Rim AU for a while, so I jumped at the chance to do so for this event. It did get away from me slightly, but I hope you enjoy it! Extra special thanks to my lovely betas [Becca](http://archiveofourown.org/users/devicing) and [Jess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jessanimus) for listening to me ramble about this fic for a month. 
> 
> Please read the end notes for more information on how to vote! 
> 
> Banner provided by [benriya-nic-kerdoodle](http://benriya-nic-kerdoodle.tumblr.com/).

“How’s being a permanent recruit treating you?” Eren asked as soon as Jean entered the lounge, a familiar start to banter between the two of them.

Rather than respond in kind, Jean scowled and snapped, “Not in the mood right now, Jaeger.” A quick glance into the room had led him to believe it was empty, and he’d been looking to get a quick moment of privacy before he was due back at the Academy. Apparently, he was out of favor with luck entirely that day, because he’d missed the sight of Eren stretched out on a far couch.

“Alright, alright, no need to bite,” Eren sighed and continued prodding at a sluggishly bleeding gash on his shin.

Throwing himself into the nearest chair, Jean put his head in his hands and let out a deep sigh, searching for calm somewhere deep inside himself. He only found a wildly raging storm of emotions, none of which were conducive to his goals. Eren only stood the silence for a minute before he asked, “Hey, you okay?”

“What do you think, genius?” Jean leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders, rubbing at the tension ache at the back of his neck. “I feel like I’m going nowhere. And there’s the small matter of the Marshal’s ultimatum.”

“Ultimatum?” That wasn’t the voice he was expecting in response. Jean looked up to see Armin standing in the doorway, holding a first aid kit.

“I’m running out of time,” Jean admitted, and it was the first time he’d ever said it out loud. Not even in calls to his mother had he said what he’d known to be true for a while now. “The current group of recruits are nearly graduated. I’ve got a narrow range of Drift compatibility. If I can’t make it work with Marlo, I can either gracefully accept a reassignment to another department or leave the Shatterdome altogether.”

Jean tried to sound casual and controlled, but his voice wavered as he spoke, and he could feel the words wrap around his throat like a noose. The news had been weighing on him since last week, when Marshal Smith had called him into his office and tried to be kind as he delivered a lethal dose of reality to Jean’s hope that he could still be a pilot, still live up to the potential his best friend had always seen in him.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? That Marco was still so prominent in his mind, even long after he’d last been in it.

Eren made a small noise of disbelief. “That’s not really something you can control,” he said.

Jean shrugged, resigned. “I’m a drain on resources. A Ranger that can’t pilot a Jaeger is useless.”

Armin shook his head. “I’m sure he didn’t say that. Stop touching, Eren,” he added, swatting away Eren’s hands so he could start the process of cleaning the wound with antiseptic from the kit.

“Not in so many words,” Jean admitted. “But it’s obvious. I could be put to use somewhere else.” It didn’t need explaining, not when everyone on base had to work to earn their keep. There was no room for dead weight.

“Well, it’s not necessarily the end of the world,” Armin said. The uniform he wore bore the embossed letters of a Neural Bridge Operator over his heart, his name engraved just above his title. Jean instantly felt bad for complaining about his struggles as a pilot hopeful when Armin was an example of how piloting didn’t always work out for everyone.

“Yeah,” he conceded quietly and took a moment before he deliberately changed the topic with a pointed, “How’d you nearly lose your leg, Eren?”

Eren turned red as he said, “I had a fight with a sheet of metal.”

Armin rolled his eyes. “It’s what he gets for hanging around the engineers while they’re working.” As he spoke, he applied an antibiotic ointment to the ugly gash before gently stretching a bandage over it. Patting Eren’s leg, he signaled that he was done.

“Hey, you can’t blame me! Not when it’s Crimson Vengeance going under the soldering iron,” Eren said as he stood up gingerly to test his weight on the leg. The only evidence of his discomfort was a small grimace, but he stood tall. "I've gotta take care of her."

“You're letting your last name get to you again. You and your Jaeger can't be that close," Jean said, smirking as Eren gave him the finger.

“Fuck off. Come talk to me when you've got a Jaeger of your own.” Eren rolled down his pant leg and snatched up the makeshift pillow he’d been using for. It was his bomber jacket, which bore a stylized rendition of a bloody dagger surrounded by the bold letters of his Jaeger’s name.

He shrugged it on and said, “I’m off to thrive under pressure, unlike _some_ people. Thanks for the help, Armin.” As he was leaving, he tossed a “Good luck, Jean,” over his shoulder, which was probably the nicest thing Jean had ever heard from him.

“Remember to go to medical later! I’m not a doctor!” Armin called out after him. Eren acknowledged him with a wave of his hand, but Armin only sighed and shook his head like he knew he’d have to heckle Eren about it later.

Now that they were alone, Armin looked at Jean with an expression as familiar to him as Jaeger’s banter: It said that Armin saw through his bullshit and right to the heart of his fear. It would make sense after all, since Armin had been in his place before. Jean remembered him as a young recruit, bright-eyed with determination despite the physical and emotional scars left behind by the kaiju attack that had leveled his hometown. Thick as thieves with Eren and Mikasa, they’d gone through training a tight cluster, and Jean remembered being jealous of that, because even his friendship with Marco had paled in comparison to those three.

But that hadn’t mattered. Although Armin had excelled at Officer training, he hadn’t managed the rest. Despite his friends’ support, low combat scores and poor test syncs with other recruits had sent Armin away from Ranger training long before the second cut and into another position that he was better suited for.

Ask anyone on base about the specifics of the neural handshake and they’d direct you to Armin. When it came to the Drift, he was a rising techie in the Control Room, and the head of the K-Science Lab loved to pick his brain. He was modest about it if you brought it up, but Jean heard the talk. Not becoming a pilot hadn’t damaged Armin, it’d helped him flourish.

Jean was watching Armin pack up the first aid kit, careful to put everything back in its place, when Armin suddenly said, “Being scared won’t help you in the Drift, you know.”

“I know that,” Jean said automatically.

“Then you’ve gotta stop thinking about your failures and just focus on what you have to do.” It was uncanny, really, how Armin seemed to know exactly what had him all twisted up inside. The past few months had started to take a toll on him. With barely a moment to mourn, training had continued, but graduation had come and gone and still Jean was partnerless, adrift.

On many levels, it hurt to have been left behind. Despite graduating a Ranger, special circumstances had led to the extended search for Jean’s partner. More and more, he understood that the test scores and physical ability that had placed him at the top of his class were meaningless when the only person that possibly could have have been his co-pilot was dead. The thought managed to stir up a small amount of painful grief before Jean pushed it back and slammed the door shut on a path that would make it even harder to make it through the afternoon. The only evidence of his imbalance was in a shaky exhale only he noticed.

Tucking the first aid kit under his arm, Armin stopped at Jean’s side and hesitated a moment before he placed his hand on Jean’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Don't give up. We need good Rangers, and you deserve to be one."

“You should have been one too,” Jean said, and immediately regretted it at the look on Armin’s face: a resignation so familiar, he saw it in the mirror every morning.

Armin let out a small sigh. “Maybe. But what did I just say? Stop thinking about failure. It’s a dead end.”

Jean gave Armin a rueful smile. “You’re right. As always.” He stood and gave into the temptation to ruffle Armin’s hair, which Armin allowed with only a small amount of fuss. “Where ya headed? I’ll walk you.”

“The lab.” Armin raised an eyebrow. “You sure you wanna risk it?” The lab was Hanji’s domain, where you were likely to either be spontaneously covered in unidentifiable kaiju goo or substituted for Moblit when Hanji wasn’t looking and needed an extra pair of hands.

“I’ll think of it as prep for the day I fight an actual kaiju,” Jean said, and when Armin laughed, soft and quiet, there was a warm flutter in his chest.

As they walked, Armin rattled on about one of Hanji’s new, possibly insane experiments, but Jean only listened with half an ear because the rest of his mind was focused on tomorrow. His last test Drift. He hadn’t lied when he said he was out of time. He just hadn’t told the others that he’d already approached Pixis for a placement among his engineers. The time for special circumstances was over. If his combat scores with the recruit didn’t pan out as expected, if their shaky Drift compatibility couldn’t hold up, then it was time for him to move on as an officer in another division.

But one look at Armin reminded him: He couldn’t let the thought of failure hold him back. He had to pilot a Jaeger, because he’d made a promise and he intended to keep it.

* * *

Jean woke twenty minutes before his alarm, heart making a furious effort to beat its way out of his chest. Hazy, ears still ringing with phantom screams, he worked to extract himself from the threads of the nightmare that still clung to him. He rested his hand on his sternum and waited for the unsteady rhythm of his heart stabilize and slow, until his breaths came easier and the cold sweat dried on his skin.

He lay there and tried to practice the meditation techniques Mikasa had shared with him but it was no use. The longer he lay in bed, the more he worked himself up, until he was wide awake and feeling nauseous with nerves. It was infuriating, feeling like a green recruit again, as if it was his first day and not nearing on his first year at the Shatterdome.

With a long, slow sigh, Jean sat up and got out of bed, resigned to an early start. He rubbed at his eyes, which were grainy and ached from the hours he’d spent awake the night before. In the dim light of his lamp, he’d hunched over his sketchbook and chipped away at the schematics he’d been working on quietly for months now, dreaming. The only upside to waking up early was breakfast; it’d be best pick for him with a side of minimal conversation since he doubted any of his friends would be up and about yet. It was for the best. He didn't want to hear the words "good luck" anymore.

Before he left his room, Jean slipped on a plain windbreaker over his uniform jumpsuit, a flimsy thing worn thin by months of continuous use. It was nothing like the Jaeger pilot jackets he admired with stunning jealousy, but it was his. He paused and looked at himself in the mirror and ran his fingers over the patch that lay over his heart. It was the emblem of the Jaeger Academy and the Pan Pacific Defense Corps, the defining feature of which was the wings he was tracing over.

Eren had once called them the “wings of freedom” and Jean had obnoxiously made fun of him for his sentimentalism, but secretly, he liked it. It was a reminder that ultimately he wasn’t doing this for fame and fortune and personal gain. He was doing this for the other people, the ones that couldn’t fight for themselves, so they could one day be free of the terror that had taken hold of humanity since the day the kaiju broke through the Breach.

Jean made a face at himself in the mirror. Sentimentalism was contagious.

* * *

The walk to the part of base that housed the Jaeger Academy felt shorter than ever. He’d agreed to meet with Marlo in the lobby, but he wasn’t there when Jean arrived. Jean only managed a few minutes of shifting around on his feet while the video ad for the Academy played overhead on an irritating loop before he decided he’d head up to the testing room and let Marlo catch up to him.

There, Jean was surprised to see a familiar head of hair among the rest of the staff setting up. Armin looked up at his entrance and shrugged helplessly. “I swear I didn’t plan this,” he said, gesturing with a coffee mug that was precariously filled to the top. “I can always—”

“No, it’s fine,” Jean interrupted. “I don’t mind you being here. Reminds me of the old days.” The testing room hadn’t changed since they had been recruits themselves. It was a copy of the real control center that monitored all Jaeger missions, with a one way glass wall that allowed a view into the Jaeger Combat Simulator, which was otherwise a replica of a Conn-Pod.

“Except not as humiliating for me,” Armin added, and Jean wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be a joke or just a sampling of Armin’s brand of honesty, so he settled for a polite chuckle. Marlo stepped inside then, looking green around the gills with sweat dotting what was visible of his forehead through his fringe. He stammered out good morning to everyone and apologized for being late.

Jean waved it off. “It’s alright. They’re not ready for us yet.”

Marlo sighed. “Oh good. What’s the delay?”

Sweeping his fingers through the holographic display in front of him, scrolling through what looked like lines of code, Armin said, “There was just an equipment malfunction during the last pair yesterday. I was called in to double check and make sure the simulation is running smoothly.” He looked up and amended, “But there’s nothing to worry about. It’s all looking good.”

Jean knew he was saying it more for the benefit of Marlo, who had gone white as a sheet at the word _malfunction_. Not that Jean doubted it really was safe. If Armin said it was good to go, Jean would go confidently.

“Hitch said Drift malfunctions can leave you a vegetable,” Marlo said in a wavering voice. Jean rolled his eyes, mirrored by Armin, although he did so with more subtly. Hitch was a fear-mongering jerk who’d been trying to get Marlo to quit the pilot program since Jean had started training with him, so Jean had little lost love for her and the opinions she shared with Marlo.

“Hitch doesn’t know a thing about neural links,” Armin said none-too-kindly. “You’ve got half a dozen experts in this room, nothing’s gonna go wrong on our end. Just make sure you do your part to keep it stable.”

Which was honestly easier said than done. In reality, their Drift compatibility was threadbare, but at least Jean hadn’t fallen out of the Drift as soon as they had linked, as he had with other partners. It was weak, but Petra had encouraged them, told them they could raise their scores enough to qualify. “Nothing some extra training can’t fix!” she’d said, smiling. “But first we have to get you two out as Rangers.”

While Marlo hadn’t been his first choice, he was one the only one that had stuck through training with Jean. There’d been another trainee, a girl who’d dropped Jean as soon as her sync scores with another classmate had shot past their own average simulation completions. It had been the obvious choice for her, just like it was the obvious choice for him and Marlo to make the most of it.

It wasn't his fault that Jean's mind was stubborn, which made it nearly inhospitable to others, but that was just how Petra had described it in her own unique way of being encouraging.

Jean had frowned and said, “You’re lucky I have enough self-confidence to not be hurt by that.”

She’d laughed and said, “That’s the problem, Jean! Be flexible!”

He at least respected Marlo enough for working hard at this, even if his friends didn't think he could do it. He looked at Armin, head bent over his console, and thought he was lucky in that regard.

Jean was drawn out of his thoughts by a friendly clap on the back. “Good morning!” He looked over and was surprised to see Petra, their mentor. She was shadowed by her co-pilot Oluo, who already looked bored. He wasted no time settling in a chair at an empty console, for once keeping his comments on Jean and Marlo’s shortcomings quiet, no doubt under Petra’s orders. She, on the other hand, was entirely too alert for the early morning hour.

He said as much to her and added, “I thought you couldn’t be here?”

“I made it happen! I didn’t want to miss your last simulation,” she said with a smile and made her way to the central console, where a flick of a switch brought up the display that would let her monitor the neural link between Jean and Marlo. “Levi was gonna send one of his techies, but I convinced him to let me run this simulation since I’m so involved with the training exercises at the Academy. Are we ready to roll, Armin?” she asked over her shoulder.

Armin nodded and switched gears, fingers nimble on the keyboard. As he typed, he pulled up a screen to initiate the simulation. “As soon as they’re wired in.” Tucking his hair behind one ear, he slipped on his headset, giving Jean a small smile of encouragement before becoming absorbed in the display readouts.

“Well, boys, what are you waiting for?”

* * *

Getting suited up took no more than seven minutes, like it would in real time if they had to intercept a kaiju heading for shore. Inside the mock Conn-Pod, Jean and Marlo took their places. Jean was secured in place on the left, his boots firmly locked into the motion platform, and wired in to the rest of the controls. The first time he’d stepped inside the Jaeger Combat Simulator and gone through the motions, he’d nearly had a panic attack. Everything had felt restrictive, from the circuitry suit that covered every inch of his body to the helmet to the wires that weighed down his arms. But now he no longer felt the weight, only the same set of nerves that swooped through his stomach and set it churning.

Beside him, Marlo was taking deep, measured breaths, but the way his hands trembled around their tight grip on the controls betrayed his nervousness. Jean caught his attention with a sharp “Hey!” and said, “We’ve got this, alright? It’s just one more simulation.”

“Yeah,” Marlo breathed, closing his eyes.

“Let’s get started,” came Petra’s voice through their comms.

Jean looked forward, eyes on the viewport of their ‘Jaeger’, where their mission parameters were outlined. Defeat the kaiju, minimize civilian casualties and damage to the city, and watch out for the toxic contamination of kaiju blood. Standard, until he caught sight of the kaiju details. Leaning forward, he switched on their comm and said, “Thanks for the sweet setup, Armin.” It was no surprise, considering he’d discussed this same kaiju simulation with Armin only yesterday and told him how it was one of his favorites.

“There’s no need to thank me, Jean, this is completely randomized,” Armin replied neutrally, and Jean grinned. Clearing his throat, Armin switched gears. “Engaging pilot to pilot protocol. Prepare for neural handshake.”

Buoyed now, Jean settled back and steeled himself for the wash of memories. Instead, there was a sudden surge of power and the lights inside their mock Conn-Pod flared and flicked before stabilizing. Next to him, Marlo cursed under his breath.

“Nothing to worry about,” Petra chimed in just as the computer’s voice, calm and cool, declared the neural link initiated and Jean was momentarily swept away, pulled out into the chaotic sea of Marlo’s mind, which felt much like drowning. He forgot who he was for a moment, before a passing wisp of a memory (his mother calling him down for dinner) snapped him back into himself.

Their screen immediately flashed an alignment error, which meant they, and the two hemispheres of their simulated Jaeger, weren’t syncing up. “You guys need to calibrate before we can even start the simulation,” Armin said. “Can you do this for me?”

Jean could already feel a massive headache building right at his temples, but he buckled down and tamped down on all his negative emotions to reach into the Drift and across several hellish layers of mixed memories, his and Marlo’s. Their headspace was nonexistent, because Marlo was fighting the Drift. Jean scowled briefly before he made the effort to rein in his frustration. This was a struggle he’d experienced before, and he knew his own mind wasn’t doing them any favors, so he took a steadying breath and focused on letting all the emotions and memories flow.

“Come on, Marlo,” Jean urged quietly. On his right, Marlo was quiet and distant, pale to the point of concern. Then he took a shuddering breath and nodded, and he went through the paces of calibrating the Jaeger with Jean. Once that was done, he asked, “We’re gonna be alright, aren’t we?”

Jean heard Armin sigh before he spoke up. “You two are going to be fine. I have faith in you.”

Except Jean didn’t hear his voice.

He blinked and Marco stood in Marlo’s place, wired up, smiling. _I have faith in you._ And then, like a photograph torn in half, Marco was no longer whole. Jean startled and jerked away instinctively but he hoped it didn’t register as more than a blip in his heart-rate. He cursed silently and grit his teeth, unwilling to draw attention to it. This was another common occurrence in his Drifts, which made this simulation no different than any of the other hundred he’d done.

“Alright, good luck, boys,” he heard Petra say, but his attention was already on the digital HUD now displaying a sprawling bay and an ugly kaiju rising out of the water. There was a stopwatch running on the screen already, so he moved and pulled Marlo along with him, diving headfirst into their simulation. The monster spotted them and bristled, sensing an enemy. It roared, the cavern of its maw a fluorescent blue, and charged, and the two of responded by picking up speed.

But they only took a few steps before the power surged again and the screen filled with lines of code for a brief moment. When it disappeared, they could no longer move their Jaeger.

“What the hell?!” Jean struggled in place, but no matter how many steps he took on the platform, they remained stationary. With the kaiju bearing down on them, they couldn’t brace for impact, and it crashed into them with an aggressive force. Their screen flicked and the view tilted as their Jaeger nearly collapsed into the water. Their simulator score flashed red along with the rest of the data readout on their screen.

There was a sudden spike of fear in their connection, which would have been natural if Jean hadn’t grasped a memory of Marlo’s -- a woman’s voice, Hitch, saying: _watch out, they won’t discriminate, you’ll get hurt too_ \-- and then, an epiphany on the tip of his tongue, Jean started to call for a time out, but when he looked over at Marlo, it was too late.

Their eyes met and Marlo hesitated only a moment, fear and guilt warring expressions on his face, before he yanked off his helmet and disconnected himself with the emergency release, stumbling free from his wired connections. At that moment, the alarms really began to blare in earnest as the kaiju proceeded to tear into their Jaeger. Even though it wasn’t real (it wasn’t, it wasn’t, he kept repeating in a daze), the circuitry that connected him to the simulation wanted him to believe it was, and he felt the systems surge and fail in skittering jolts of pain along his skin. Jean cried out in pain and tried to disengage, but it was easier to give into the rush pulling him down.

When the Drift hit him this time, it was like a storm, and Jean was alone and anchorless.

* * *

Over the blaring of alarms, the computer’s cool voice kept repeating, “Critical misalignment. Neural link disrupted. Would you like to try again?”

“The simulation’s kept going, but nothing’s responding,” Armin’s voice held little disguised horror as he began to type frantically, flipping switches as he went, trying to trigger an emergency shutdown. It was ignored, as even his digital readouts began to flicker and fail. “We’re looking at huge feedback loops of energy in the circuitry!”

“Hit the fail-safe!” Petra yelled. “Run the neural blocker and get him out.”

“I just did! Jean isn’t responding!” Armin slammed on his keyboard with obvious frustration as another error screen popped up, preventing him from remotely accessing the circuitry of Jean’s Pons helmet. “I don’t understand, the system is running as if he’s connected to a real Jaeger. If we don’t get him disconnected, the neural overload alone--”

“Just shut this whole thing down and restart the system. That should protect his mind -- Shit!” The sound of Petra cursing made Armin pause in his frantic attempts to wrangle the system.

On both their screens, the monitoring system registered a climbing heart rate and dangerous spikes in brain activity. Petra sent Oluo running off with a single word, “Go”, no doubt to fetch Levi, but Armin feared this couldn’t wait for their Chief to arrive. Jean might be permanently damaged by then.

He stood so fast his chair nearly toppled, and he dashed for entrance to the Jaeger Combat Simulator, shoving aside Marlo as he stumbled through, ashen and already apologizing. Armin wanted to hit him, but his fear for Jean propelled him forward. Behind him, Petra grabbed Marlo by his arm and shook him, telling him to save his apologies for Jean when this was over, and pushed him aside.

Reaching Marlo’s abandoned helmet, Armin worked quickly to reroute its circuitry to the wires that would have connected the suit to move the Jaeger in the simulation. He pulled it over his head with little finesse and wasted no time in remotely initiating the neural link protocol using the computer system inside the Conn-Pod. Without the drivesuit, there was a possibility he wouldn’t even be able to jump into the connection, but he had to try. He knew this much: Jean had chased the rabbit and was being spared feeling the worst of the physical effects, but his mind was still linked to a system going haywire. He had to be drawn out.

Armin had studied this. He knew the Drift and its potential, or at least he had to trust he did, because he was about to expose himself to the same glitch that was currently destroying their simulation setup. Armin steeled himself and hit the switch that latched their minds together.

* * *

_“C’mon, Marco, it’s our first day off in weeks and you want to spend it inside?” Jean scoffed. “No way. Let’s go to the city, buy something nice.”_

_Marco laughed. “I don’t need anything, Jean. I’ve got everything I need right here.” He gestured at his bunk, with its neat sheets and the picture of his family he kept framed on his bedside table. The biggest mess was the haphazard pile of books he’d borrowed from Armin; he’d been telling Jean he was going to return them for a couple weeks now, but it was hard when Armin wasn’t in their program anymore._

_“I’ve got a craving and only some street food will satisfy it,” Jean insisted. He snatched up Marco’s jacket and threw it at him, smirking at Marco’s spluttering protest. “Let’s go.”_

_The trip into the city was nicer than Jean expected it would be. Peaceful, almost. The sky was dark and overcast, the rain a steady drizzle, so he and Marco walked shoulder to shoulder under an umbrella they’d lifted off of Sasha on their way out. Marco had promised to bring her back some sweets in payment, because Jean wouldn’t since he was still smarting from his defeat at her hands in the Kwoon Room._

_“She beat you fair and square,” Marco said, nudging Jean with his elbow after he grumbled about Sasha for the third time. “‘Sore loser’ isn’t a good look for you.”_

_Jean’s laugh was rueful. “I know she did. We’re compatible, I guess, but I think she has her sights set on Connie.”_

_“He’s practically her second brain already,” Marco said._

_“Well, it’s a good thing I have you, then,” Jean threw his arm around Marco. “We’re gonna be a hell of a team, you and I.”_

_“Yeah, we are,” Marco agreed, smiling. “But don’t compare us to Eren and Mikasa, please.”_

_“I wasn’t going to even mention them!” Jean protested, even though the tips of his ears were turning red, which was admission enough._

_“Uh-huh,” Marco teased. “I’ve been in your head, Jean, it was practically gonna be your next sentence.”_

_Jean sputtered in indignation, but it only lasted until they stepped into the great shadow of a kaiju skeleton. Its ribs towered high above them, forming a natural dome that enterprising humans had decorated with banners and lights and long tendrils of ivies growing unnaturally. Underneath it sprawled a vast marketplace that had flourished in the many months since the monster’s defeat. It was local superstition that where a kaiju fell, another would not strike again. Jean thought that was bullshit, of course, but he liked the market and its people with their eccentric wares._

_Sometimes, they came across people that saw the logo on their uniforms and thanked them profusely for the work they did, but then there were those that spit as they walked past and called them a drain on humanity’s last resources. Jean would always twitch and itch to make them show respect, but Marco would always touch his arm and shake his head. “It’s not worth it, Jean. We don’t do this for their gratitude anyway.”_

_They were lucky that day. No one spit or grumbled or called them names. A woman found Jean’s smile charming and gave him an apple for free, which he tucked away in a pocket to share with the others later. On a street corner, a man played a beautiful medley on the guitar while a young girl danced along skillfully. They stood and watched a while, and at the end of their performance Marco dug a few coins out of his pocket to place into the hat at the man’s feet._

_The day spun out slowly, the two of them content to roam the market with no goal in sight. “We should be back before dinner,” Marco said finally, as the lights above began to flicker on in anticipation of the falling night. “So everyone can taste some of these sweets.” He shook the brown bag of candies, and Jean snatched at it to steal another, but Marco dodged his attempt. “Don’t be greedy!”_

_“Aw, come on, please?” Jean tried again, grinning even when he failed. “Here, I’ll trade you,” and he tried to give Marco what was left of the kebob he’d been eating. He didn’t even know what meat it was, but it was good and said as much to Marco, who wrinkled his nose._

_“I think your taste for street food is the one thing that’ll never stick despite all the Drifting we do.”_

_Jean was in the middle of mocking Marco when the sirens went off. It was a bone chilling noise, a universal sound that declared the city was under attack. At first it drowned out all other sounds, time slowed and the marketplace muted, but then the screaming started._

_“Kaiju will make landfall in 20 minutes. Please proceed to your nearest shelter.” The pre-recorded message played over the intercoms on a loop, repeating itself in a variety of languages, but it could barely be heard over the panic, as people rushed to abandon the area in a cacophony of panic and fear ._

_They were overcome in a flood of people, pushed around and nearly knocked down. Jean took hold of Marco’s hand in an iron grip and began pushing his way through the crowd, but it was hard when the streets were so narrow and it felt like the entirety of the human race was trying to squeeze through._

_Jean could barely breathe, and even though they’d been trained for this, collective fear was a powerful thing. All he knew was that he couldn’t lose Marco and that the nearest shelter in the subway stations was a block away._

_Someone going the wrong way lost their balance and knocked into them, nearly taking Marco down. Jean pulled him and the stranger up. “The shelter’s this way, sir!” he said to stuttered thanks. Now the crowd spilled over them and around them, pushing him and Marco apart. He looked for him, meeting his scared gaze before a child stumbled into Marco, wailing. In the split second it took for Marco to scoop him up and hand the boy to his mother, there was a sea of people between him and Jean._

_Jean whirled around, neatly dodging a flailing arm. “Marco!” he yelled. Faintly, he heard his answering, “Jean!” but he couldn’t see him._

_“Marco!” It was true panic clawing at his throat now, even though the logical side of him knew that Marco could take care of himself. Marco knew where the shelter was. He’d make it. Jean would find him. He had to believe this._

“Jean! Please!” _A different voice, shouting his name in his ear. He turned around again, but there was no one there. He’d lost Marco. He cursed out loud, once, twice, his voice lost in between the sirens and the screaming. Finally, he let the tide carry him down the street and into the damp, miserable darkness below._

_He crouched in a subway station teeming with scared people. As the ground began to rumble above them, dust and dirt raining down on their heads, the noise quieted to the pin-drop silence of despair. Whispered prayers, broken sobs, and children’s cries were desperately shushed. As the sirens were replaced by ear-splitting roars, Jean shut his eyes and, not for the first time in his life, he pleaded with whatever higher power there might be. He spent the better part of an hour doing so, until exhaustion quieted his mind, and then he only waited._

_The shelter held. Five hours later, Jean emerged into a dusty, broken city whose air stunk of rotting kaiju. His dirty uniform was recognized by the PPDC rescue personnel and scooped up for a speedy return to base. He asked after Marco until his voice was hoarse and they were forced to sedate him to make him get some rest. And even after that, despite Marco not returning with the other rescue crews, despite the gaping hole in his chest and in his mind that echoed empty, Jean kept returning to the city, operating on the single-minded belief that Marco was out there, same as he was, helping others like he did best._

_It wasn’t until three days later, again out on volunteer clean up, that Jean finally found him, half buried under the rubble of a building that had spilled out into the street._

_Time slowed down for him in the moment that he gazed into Marco’s single unseeing eye. It was a peculiar sensation, to simultaneously feel nothing at all and everything at once. He took a single shuddering breath of rot and dust, and he shook so violently his legs gave out._

_His ears ringing, he had to focus on his breathing or else he felt he’d choke._

“Jean! Jean, listen to me, this isn’t real.” _He knew that voice. He closed his eyes and tried to put a face to the voice -- Armin._ Armin!

“Yes! Yes, it’s me. Let go of the memory, Jean. That’s all it is.”

_Soft hands took hold of his clenched fists and coaxed them to relax. Armin’s voice was a soft whisper in his ear._ “Come find me in the Drift.”

When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t death he saw but the familiar inside of the Combat Simulator.

Emerging from the deepest Drift felt much like lunging out of water, breaking through the surface for that first taste of air. Jean gasped for breath, feeling overheated in his own skin, and hyper-aware of his surroundings. He was no longer Drifting alone, him and the machinery of the simulation. Armin’s mind was a warm, steadying presence, and the neural link between them held, even as his mock Jaeger was torn to shreds on screen. The kaiju roared again, an echo of the sound from his memories, and in an impulsive, grief-fueled movement, Jean fired off a spiteful shot from the plasma cannon before their Drift fizzled out.

The neural link between them dissipated, leaving behind the familiar sensation of loss, only this time it was amplified by the memory he’d chased after. Jean must have made some noise of distress because Armin was at his side in an instant.

"Hey, it's okay," Armin whispered, detaching him from the wires with controlled urgency. He tore the helmet off of Jean and tossed it aside with little care for the tech. Underneath the suit, Jean felt pinpricks of pain, bright bursts felt with every movement, despite the care with which Armin lowered him to the floor.

Armin. He must have said his name out loud because Armin said, “I’m here, Jean.” His eyes were bright, one of them shot through with red, and there was a thin trickle of blood at his nose. Armin noticed Jean staring and swiped at his face. Staring at the blood on his fingers, he said, "It’s probably because of the initial neural overload before we synced up." His voice was distant with something like shock.

That laugh that burst from Jean was weak but incredulous, almost delirious from the stress of what had just happened and the blazing headache now pounding away at his temple. "I don’t know what happened, but we Drifted." He laughed again, clutching at Armin's shirt. "Armin, we’re Drift compatible."

"I know," Armin said dazedly. More blood dripped from his nose and onto the collar of his uniform.

Petra burst into the room just as the simulation screen went black and all the lights in the Conn-Pod shut off, leaving only the bright red of the emergency lights. “Are you two okay?” she asked, coming to kneel beside them.

While Armin answered in the affirmative, Jean still stared up at him. He was looking at Jean with concern and Jean wanted to tell him that despite the malfunction, despite chasing the rabbit and getting trapped in a memory, his mind had never allowed anyone else in so easily, not since Marco, but the words stuck in his throat.

Medical personnel filed in, looking grim. Petra was shaking her head as Armin said, “But I checked it, there was nothing, it was _clean_.”

“It’s not your fault,” she insisted, steadying Armin as he swayed. “This was more than a glitch, Armin.” The medics stepped in and carefully transferred Jean onto a stretcher; when they tried to coax Armin onto one, he refused, a stubborn set to his mouth.

Petra helped him to his feet, saying, “But Armin, what you did, rescuing Jean from the Drift like that-- I think we can make something good out of today’s fiasco.”

Armin glanced down at Jean and shook his head. “This was a fluke. I failed out of Ranger training.”

“Stop arguing,” Jean slurred, trying to sit up on the stretcher, fighting against the medic’s hand trying to hold him down.

“Nothing’s impossible. Facts are, you two are Drift compatible and it likely saved his life,” Petra said, her smile gentle. As Armin shook his head again, he began to blink rapidly and covered his mouth with his hand, retching quietly. An attentive medic shoved a bucket into his hands just in time for him to retch

The last thing Jean managed was a weak, “That’s disgusting,” before his eyes rolled back and he fell onto the stretcher, unconscious.

* * *

Jean blinked his way to consciousness slowly, following the soft, steady beeping of a heart monitor. As his vision cleared and focused, the first person he saw was Armin, seated at his bedside with a distant gaze and still slightly bloody, his uniform stained at the collar from his earlier nosebleed. “Who was the idiot that didn’t let you be a Ranger?” he rasped, startling Armin out of his reverie.

“Don’t be rude,” Armin replied automatically, but he looked pleased.

“Seriously, that was the most reckless thing anyone’s ever done for me. Thank you,” he said earnestly and watched as Armin flushed, cheeks and ears red. To ease off, he added, “You also look terrible, by the way.”

Armin laughed softly, shaking his head. “You’re one to talk. Nearly made brain dead by a simulation.”

“Talk about weird, huh,” he said, struggling to sit up. Armin moved to help him, adjusting the bed for him.

Armin’s answering, “Yeah, weird,” was flat enough that Jean looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. Before he could ask for clarification, there was a knock at the door and it opened, revealing Marshal Smith, flanked by Petra and Levi, who still wore his headset and a deep scowl that spoke volumes of his mood.

“I hear you’ve both been through quite an ordeal,” Marshal Smith said, stepping into the room.

Jean and Armin shared a look. Jean shrugged and said, “Understatement, sir.”

He nodded. Addressing Armin, he said, “But what you did was very brave.”

Armin floundered for a for a moment before he settled on, “Thank you, sir.”

“I’m sure you both must be wondering what happened,” the Marshal began. He cut an intimidating figure, always had even with the pinned sleeve of his missing right arm, and Jean felt it even more so in this tiny hospital room. He’d been one of the original Rangers at the start of the program, but contamination with kaiju blue had cost him his arm and his Jaeger, although both he and his co-pilot had lived to tell the tale.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any clear answers for you.”

Petra added, “We can only say that it appears our systems were tampered with remotely.”

Levi’s scowled seemed to deepen. “What Petra’s describing is _sabotage_.”

“Levi,” the Marshal admonished quietly, glancing over at him. “We don’t need to foster an atmosphere of fear and suspicion on base. The kaiju do enough damage without us adding to it.” He and Levi stared at each other for a beat before the Marshal relented with, “Although we do have concerns.”

“It was a virus, right?” Armin said confidently, like he’d been mulling this over the entire time Jean had been unconscious. “What happened today-- If someone purposefully input a code to trigger a malicious system breakdown, it would trap the pilots in the Drift and force them to chase the rabbit, essentially leaving them vulnerable to neural overload and attack. Especially if the meld is broken while in the field and they can’t move their Jaeger. It would be even more devastating if applied outside a simulation.”

Petra confirmed Armin’s conclusions with a reluctant nod.

“But why would someone do that?”

The Marshal sighed. “It’s common knowledge that several Shatterdomes around the world have been shut down: Los Angeles, Anchorage, Hong Kong. Panama City was recently bought by the private sector. The UN expects us to join that list soon. Our funding was cut entirely last month.”

“ _What_?” Jean exclaimed. “How are we still operating?”

“On sheer will and the generous contributions of private benefactors,” Erwin explained. “We refuse to be shut down.”

“Damn fucking right,” Levi muttered.

“But we can't be naive: certain people stand to gain from the eradication of the Jaeger program,” Petra said. “Our funding is being funneled to a new program, sponsored by one private company in particular: Sina, Inc. What for? To build giant anti-Kaiju walls around the cities at most risk, in order to eliminate the need for Jaegers altogether. It’d be okay if they didn’t want all of our tech too.”

Glowering, Levi described it as, “Putting all of humanity in a pen and hoping for the best,” while Erwin corrected him with the official statement, “To allocate resources to protecting humanity, instead of waging war.”

Erwin looked at Jean and Armin, his gaze heavy with the severity of the situation. “Soon, this will become public knowledge, but only the facts. I want to avoid operating under the shadow of a thousand rumors. I want to ask that you keep these speculations quiet. Let us investigate.”

Armin looked reluctant, but he still murmured, “Of course, sir,” and Jean nodded in agreement.

“Good,” he said decisively. “In better news, I believe you’ve found a co-pilot, Jean.”

“Marlo?” he puzzled, brow furrowed.

Levi scoffed. “No. He’s no longer a candidate.”

“Then--” Jean glanced over at Armin, who avoided his gaze.

The Marshal nodded. “We need good Rangers on the frontline to do so. Armin, I know you work Mission Control, but circumstances have changed. Regardless of the results of your time at the Academy, if you wanted, you could pursue this path that’s opened up with Jean.”

Armin opened his mouth, but Levi held up a hand. “Don’t give us an answer now” Gesturing between the two of them, he said, “Talk it over.”

“With the right training, the two of you could be in a Jaeger within a month’s time,” Petra said, as if Jean needed the extra incentive. It was his dream, his future, being handed to him, despite all the obstacles and the disastrous simulation. But his heart couldn’t soar, not with the uncertainty on Armin’s face and the thought of a failing Jaeger program.

All Jean could say was, “We’ll discuss it.”

As soon as they were alone, Armin slumped in his chair and sighed, covering his face with his hands. Jean lay back against his pillows with a groan, his whole body aching in earnest now. If his headache had been a low thrumming before, now it was an outright pounding at his temple that made him want to curl up in the dark for a long time.

"Well," Armin said. "This is what you've always wanted, right?" While his tone of voice was neutral, it couldn't hide the shade of exhaustion in his expression or the way he worried his bottom lip with his teeth.

"That I could fuck up my final test Drift so epically and still be promoted to Ranger with a co-pilot?" Jean laughed. "Hell yeah, it is, but--"

"But?" Armin looked up, quizzical.

"Is it what _you_ want?" Jean ventured, tentative. "Like the Marshal said, you've got your place," here Jean gestured at his uniform. "and I wouldn’t force you to leave that. But you could have a Jaeger, with me, if you wanted it."

"I don't know," Armin admitted, and Jean had to consciously work to keep his disappointment from showing on his face. From the look on Armin's face, he wasn't very successful. He wasn’t sure whether it was entirely because his dream of piloting a Jaeger hinged on this decision or if Armin’s hesitation felt like a personal rejection.

"I'd made peace with the idea I'd never be a Ranger or pilot a Jaeger. There was a reason Shadis told me to pack my bags."

Jean rolled his eyes. "Shadis was the worst. Also, what was it you told me about forgetting past failures? You're one of the strongest people I know. You saving my ass proves it." Armin made a small noise of protest as he blushed, but Jean ignored him and forged ahead. "So maybe you weren't ready for it back then, but that doesn't mean you couldn't get through training now. _No one_ gets this second chance. Don't say no before you've even tried it."

“I thought I was supposed to be the one giving you pep talks?” Armin was smiling slightly but he fell silent then, and Jean did too, giving him the space to work out this problem on his own.

“Drifting with you was--” Armin started, hesitant.

“Easy?” Jean supplied. “Or traumatic actually, considering what you saw.” It was embarrassing for Jean, that his grief had been laid bare for Armin to see, but he had to admit he hadn’t seen a trace of pity or cloying sympathy once they’d left the Drift. Even now, he only saw understanding. Sometimes he forgot that Armin was a survivor, like so many others on base.

“Nice,” Armin settled on finally. “I’d never really done it before.”

Jean was quiet for a beat as his embarrassment swelled and ebbed, turning into a warmth he couldn’t name. “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

He and Armin shared a look and smile, before the door opened again, this time a nurse who announced it was time for Armin to leave. Jean tried to protest, but Armin said, “It’s okay,” and stood to go, even though he looked equally as reluctant to cut their conversation short.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he promised and brushed his hand over the back of Jean’s on his way out. “Get some rest.” The door shut behind him, leaving Jean to a long night of fitful sleep and the lingering echo of the Drift in his mind, his memories and Marlo’s and Armin’s clamoring for space inside his head.

* * *

He was woken up for another scan at three in the morning. It’d shown that his brain waves had stabilized, at least enough for someone whose mind was often intertwined with another’s, and finally the doctor was satisfied he wasn’t going to keel over when they least expected it. Armed with that knowledge, Jean needled the nurse coming into alpha shift into getting his discharge approved early.

Standing outside the medical ward, Jean was debating whether to push his clean bill of health and go for a morning run when he spotted Marlo approaching him. He looked apprehensive, as nervous as he had the day before but with an added element of guilt.

Jean didn’t give him a chance to speak before he said, “Listen, Marlo--” but Marlo interrupted him.

“Hear me out, please,” he said, expression pleading. “I’m sorry, I really am. I’m glad you’re okay, though.”

Jean wanted to be mad and tried to give it a good attempt, but it wilts at the utter remorse on Marlo’s face. He settled for saying, “It wasn’t your fault. You escaped the worst of it, actually.”

There was that flash of guilt in Marlo’s eyes again. “About that… you should really watch your back, Jean. Considering what Hitch has told me…”

“What kind of ideas is she putting in your head?” Jean asked curiously.

Marlo hesitated for a second before he said, “That all the malfunctions happening lately were adding up to something. She seems pretty sure we’re all going to be out of a job sooner rather than later, and I don’t think she’s thinking of the kaiju.”

Knowing what he knew after the conversation in the hospital with his superiors, Jean felt dread settle in the pit of his stomach, but he tried to keep his expression neutral. He’d been in Marlo’s head and knew he wasn’t a danger by any stretch, but the events of the past day had shown it was impossible to know or anticipate each of life’s curve balls.

“She didn’t say anything else?” Jean pressed, hoping he’d give some detail he could report to the Marshal.

“Not really.” Marlo glanced down at his watch and frowned. “I’m gonna be late for my shift. I’m sorry all of this happened, but good luck. Stay safe.” And with that he was gone, leaving Jean to stare after him, scratching at the back of his neck.

He decided to go for a walk after that, moving steady and measured, cataloging the lingering aches and pains in his tired body. The feeling that things had irreversibly changed overnight shadowed him. In the face of an ever present threat of death by kaiju, sabotage shouldn't even phase him, but it shook him more than he wanted to admit.

To think that anyone could turn against another human at this time, worse still, to be so motivated by greed to do so against the very humans fighting to save the world? It was unthinkable, despicable. It left a sour taste in Jean's mouth and a strange paranoia that had him peering into the face of every Shatterdome personnel he passed by.

As he shook off that unpleasant spectre, he realized his feet had carried him to the Kwoon Room, the center of all their physical training and combat specialization. A body you could control and use well translated into a formidable Jaeger, which was why the Academy put so much emphasis on this aspect of their education.

His mood immediately lifted when he identified the figure waiting for him. “Mornin’,” he called out as he approached.

Armin straightened up and said, " _Finally._ I underestimated how long you'd take."

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“Lucky guess.” Armin was trying to be mysterious, but Jean would hazard a guess himself and say that it hadn’t been hard for Armin to predict where he would end up considering this was where all potential Rangers got their start. Just one look at Armin was proof enough that he’d had the Kwoon Room on his mind as well.

Armin was no longer wearing his uniform but a standard jumpsuit much like Jean's. It hung loose on him, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and it looked worn. Noticing Jean’s curious onceover, Armin shyly admitted, “I had to ask Eren for an old one of his since all of mine were passed down to new recruits when I left the program. Besides, it’s not like I’ll need my old clothes anyway.”

Jean’s eyes widened. “So you really want to--”

“Give this a shot, yes. I also made my promises: to Eren and Mikasa, that I’d fight beside them one day. I can’t make you any promises, Jean, but I’m going to try my best to be the co-pilot you need.”

Jean inhaled sharply, tearing his gaze away from Armin to stare at the floor because it was easier than feeling like he was looking into the sun. Everything about Armin spoke of determination, an echo of the familiar light he remembered seeing in his eyes before this whole mess, before losing Marco left Jean a little broken, back when they all had the same hope of fighting and surviving. Jean’s first reaction was to brush it off, pretend it didn’t mean as much as it did, but he knew that Armin would see right through that.

“Okay,” he said. Even though Jean had decided last night to give Armin all the space he needed to make his own decision, hearing he suddenly had a co-pilot nearly knocked the breath right out of him. Anxiety and excitement battled inside of him, but the feeling that won was relief.

“Okay?” Armin repeated, surprised that Jean had accepted him so easily.

Jean nodded, grinning. “Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.” As he passed Armin on his way into the Kwoon Room, he reached out and ruffled his hair, stifling his laughter when Armin immediately scolded him with a sharp, “Jean!”

They’d be okay.

* * *

Armin had spent the better part of the afternoon and night after he left Jean in the hospital settling his affairs in a sense. He made sure there’d be someone to cover his shifts in Mission Control while he made room in his schedule for training with Jean, and he told Hanji he’d only help in the lab twice a week instead of three times.

Worst still had been breaking the news to Eren and Mikasa, telling them what had happened and dodging Mikasa’s too perceptive questions about the malfunction and enduring their well-meaning fussing over him. Eren had predictably grumbled about it being Jean of all people, but Mikasa had elbowed him and assured Armin they needed them. “Our Strike Group is missing a key element, and I think that could be you two.”

“This might not work out at all,” he’d warned them. “It could have been a one time thing.”

Armin remembered every single one of his slips and stumbles that led to his removal from the Academy program to a path more suited to his non-combat skills. The worst part was remembering Shadis’s reminder to him while he signed his papers: “Everything else about you says you could make a great Ranger. But we don’t have the resources to waste on ‘could be’, son. We need guarantees.”

Even now he couldn’t be a guarantee, but he was selfish enough that he wanted to try anyway.

Standing in the center of the mat barefoot, Armin felt as self-conscious as he had the first day he stepped foot into the Kwoon Room and was told he was going to be taught to fight.

"Shouldn't you be taking it easy?"

"Nah, it's better to hit the ground running," Jean looked over his shoulder to grin at Armin. His energy and eagerness were contagious, and as Armin stood there and watched him prepare their training space, he felt out of his depth in a good way.

“We’re gonna start from scratch,” Jean said, pulling two staffs from storage and tossing one to Armin. “Well, mostly.”

Armin fumbled with the staff but caught it before it fell. It was appropriately sized for his height, but it still felt too big and clumsy in his hands. He eyed it and said, “This isn’t going to be fair at all. You’ve kept training but I haven’t.”

Jean leveled him with a _look_ and said, “Nice try. I happen to know you can be found in here with Mikasa and Eren more often than not.”

Armin blinked, surprised that Jean knew that at all. He shifted on his feet, uncomfortable, and replied, “I'm a spectator, more often than not.”

“I know you’ve got the knowledge in that bright head of yours,” here he grinned at the way Armin rolled his eyes at him, “We just need to translate it into skill.”

Together they worked through a standard training session recruits might be put through on any given day in the Academy. Jean took the time to explain step by step, intentionally telegraphing his moves while they went over basic techniques so Armin could see how to react and respond throughout the workout. It was grueling but whenever Jean tried to ease off or make it simpler, Armin would grit his teeth and say, "Don't take it easy on me.”

Despite the strange combination of intense motivation and self-deprecation that Armin proceeded with to get through the exercises, Jean was impressed. It was both a relief and a source of pride to find that he wasn’t as unpracticed as he could have been for someone who hadn't completed the Ranger program.

It was a rocky transition from pushing Armin’s body to find his limits to the measured pace of teaching him the finer points of sparring for compatibility. It was used to test and flex the extent of two individuals’ compatibility outside of a simulation or Drift, which he knew Armin was aware of, but the tension had nearly left him completely. Armin was keeping up easier now, seemingly in more familiar territory, and it was too easy to see him matching moves with Eren and Mikasa, seeing far ahead enough to anticipate them but not score against them.

“You’ve got some Drift compatibility with them, don't you?” Jean asked. Their movements were deliberate and precise, a choreographed dance in slow motion, but Armin stumbled when Jean spoke and cursed under his breath.

Their movements picked up again, but Jean still looked at him expectantly, eyebrow raised. Armin sighed. “I do but not the skill to fight with them. It’s why I just…”

“Settled for less?”

Armin scowled at him and took a sudden step forward to close the gap between them, bringing his staff up at an angle to jab at the underside of Jean’s jaw, stopping just centimeters from his skin. “Something like that.”

Jean laughed and said, “3-1,” and left it at that.

They finally stopped to cool down when Jean's stomach interrupted their sparring session with a particularly loud grumble and distracted Jean enough for Armin to finally score another point.

Armin dropped his staff and flopped over onto his back, spread eagle on the floor mat. He was red faced and struggling to catch his breath but he looked pleased when he glanced up at Jean. “You’re actually a good teacher,” he said with something close to awe.

“Don’t sound so surprised!” Jean said, scowling in mock offense. He wiped the sweat off his face with a gym towel and tossed it at Armin just to hear him complain. "Really though, remind me to thank Eren and Mikasa for keeping you in shape."

“Gee, thanks.” Throwing the towel back at Jean, Armin sat up. “So now what?”

Jean shrugged. “We keep training, get stronger, test our compatibility and improve it, until the Marshal says we’re good to go-- Simple.”

“Nothing’s simple,” Armin said, because he knew they wouldn’t become the ideal co-pilots overnight. At least Petra would be pleased to hear they were making the effort, and they’d be back at the simulator soon enough. The thought made Armin more nervous than he wanted to admit. If he didn’t build his foundation right, he would be no use as a co-pilot who couldn’t handle the sheer physical power needed to fight inside a Jaeger.

“Hey,” Jean poked him in the side with the butt of his stick. “Stop working yourself up. This is only day 1.”

“I wasn’t,” Armin protested, rubbing at his already tender ribs.

“C’mon,” Jean held out a hand and helped Armin to his feet, steadying him when he swayed a little. “Let’s get lunch.”

In the cafeteria, they were immediately accosted with congratulations from Connie and Sasha and curious questions from other techs who’d heard of Armin leaving Mission Control. Rumors had always spread quickly in the Shatterdome, and it was clear their situation was no exception. Jean knew that if he found it overwhelming, Armin was likely struggling to process the attention even more. He stuck closer to him, hand on the small of his back, and guided him through the lunch line as they fielded questions and intrusive remarks.

“It was a happy accident,” Jean kept saying, while Armin shrugged helplessly and said, “I just did what anyone would have done.”

As they walked to the table full of their friends and other Rangers, Jean leaned forward to mutter in Armin’s ear, “I’m going to kill Eren for flapping his big mouth.”

“So am I,” Armin replied, mouth in a tight line of discomfort.

“Alright, alright, that’s enough, everyone!” Reiner waved off the growing crowd. “Let them have a little peace!” Bertholdt sat next to him, and his smile held its usual wavering anxiety.

“We’re sorry, but we’d been waiting for you for so long, Jean -- and to think you’d come with Armin in tow!” Mina said, patting both their hands as soon as they sat down across from her and Annie, who simply looked them over and went back to her lunch without saying a word. For once her standoffish attitude was a relief.

“We’ve only Drifted once, and we don’t even have a Jaeger yet, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Armin said. Always the voice of reason, but Jean could guess that most of his measured words came from a place of insecurity rather than logic.

He was just properly relaxing and digging into his lunch with gusto when someone clapped him on the back, hard. He nearly choked and glared up at the offender, not even surprised to see that it was Eren.

Eren leaned in close with a sharp smile and said, “If you get him killed, I’ll kill you.”

Armin huffed. “Eren, stop it. Sit down.”

Mikasa slipped in next to Jean, setting her tray down gently, but her look was enough to terrify, more so than Eren’s mostly empty threats. Still grumbling, Eren sat on Armin’s other side and began to loudly tease Jean about making a rookie mistake and needing Armin to save him. Rather than feel the familiar tide of annoyance that usually came with hearing Eren speak, Jean just felt strangely happy, figured he was still riding the endorphins that came from a rigorous workout. Taking a bite of his bread roll, he said, “Yeah, he saved me. In more ways than one, probably.”

He looked over at Armin and found him staring at him with an unreadable expression. Jean smiled at him with his mouth full, satisfied when that expression was predictably replaced by disgust. Sasha swung by and stole Eren’s roll when he wasn’t looking, and at the far end of the table Connie was already reenacting his most recent battle with much drama to a crowd of techs, with additional creative input from Reiner.

It was good to see that despite the events of the past day, some things remained just the same, and that was a comfort.

* * *

The following week the Marshal announced to the rest of the Shatterdome what he’d told them at the hospital, only his speech was far more rousing, meant to lift up morale. He finished with, “Despite this adversity, we shall continue to fight,” and the crowd gathered in the hangar, the only place big enough to hold even a fraction of the base’s employees, responded with thunderous applause, clearly inspired. Which was why it nearly went unnoticed that he also let them know representatives from Sina Inc. would be arriving in two weeks to conduct a visit on behalf of their new partners in the UN to make sure the Shatterdome would keep operating at the same level as before, despite the cut funding.

As Levi would note, it was a very complicated way of saying they were sending spies. Spies who, no doubt, would be searching for their weaknesses to exploit them.

Jean would have remained ignorant of it too, if it hadn’t been for Armin pointing it out as they split off from the crowd and headed back to the Kwoon Room.

“Shit, that’s like inviting the snake right into the nest,” Jean said, running a hand through his hair with agitation.

Armin nodded. “Precisely. There haven’t been any ‘malfunctions’,” here he used air quotes and Jean had to suppress an inappropriately fond smile, “since yours, but we should be on guard as soon as they arrive.”

“You’re that worried about it?”

Armin frowned and looked away. “Jean, I’ve been worried since that day I realized we’d been attacked in our own home. Imagine what they could do from the inside.”

“They wouldn’t,” Jean insisted. “Don’t be so, so…” He trailed off, frustrated, because part of him knew Armin was right but there was another part of him that didn’t want to live in such a grim reality.

“Just be careful, Armin,” was all he said, remembering Marlo’s own warnings not long ago.

* * *

The representatives from Sina Inc. arrived on a Friday at the end of beta shift. Armin crossed paths with them as he was leaving the lab. They were a mean looking group of five, led by a tall man wearing a bowler hat tipped low. He was armed too, the shape of a double holster visible beneath his jacket. Armin couldn’t imagine a regular corporate employee having a job description that required they be armed.

As they came to a stop right in front of him, Armin made the mistake of looking up and meeting the man’s eyes. “Excuse us,” he said, giving him the kind of smile that was all teeth and no warmth.

Armin stammered, “S-sure, sorry,” and side stepped to let them pass by. He watched them disappear past the swinging double doors 0and into the lab he’d just left with a sinking feeling of dread. Distantly, he heard Hanji’s voice rise and fall, lacking its usual enthusiastic cadence. He deliberated for a moment and was taking his first step to turn back into the lab when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

It was Levi, looking just as grim as Armin felt.

“What are they doing here? Officially.”

“Acting on behalf of the UN to assure we’re running to standards despite no funding. Kenny Ackerman, the asshole with the hat, reports back and the UN decides whether we should be shut down or not.” Levi’s words were clipped, evidence of his already mounting displeasure with a team that had been on their base a very short amount of time.

“Do you know them?” Armin asked before he could censure himself.

“Let’s just say I met Kenny when I was a pilot and never liked him. He’s a corporate cutthroat and can smell a weak spot from a mile off.”

Armin opened his mouth to ask another question, more curious than ever about his Chief’s past, but Levi shook his head.

“Go on, Arlert,” he said firmly and gestured for him to keep walking. “Keep your nose clean.”

There was nothing Armin could do but follow his orders.

“I don’t like them, Jean,” he said as he finished recounting their appearance to his co-pilot. They were being suited up for a test Drift, the first since the malfunction and Armin was staving off his nerves and self-doubt by talking. Booting up their systems took an additional 15 seconds now, since J-Tech had incorporated new safety measures in response to the malfunction in the Combat Simulator, although the one Jean and Marlo had been testing in remained nonfunctional.

Jean had been patient throughout the story, and before that too, for the three weeks of intensive training he’d been running with Armin to get him up to par with the rest of them. Armin couldn’t tell whether it was working so far, since his runs still took far longer than Jean’s and he had yet to win a sparring match, but Jean had seemed confident when he’d shown up at Armin’s room the night before and said, “Let’s Drift.”

Armin had raised an eyebrow and said, “Now?” which had made Jean laugh.

“No, tomorrow. I already got us a time slot.”

Armin didn’t even have it in him to be annoyed that Jean had caught him off-guard with this because he hadn’t stopped thinking about Drifting since the first time. Even after leaving the Ranger program, his line of work as a Neural Bridge Operator had given him opportunity to Drift so he could understand it and work with the pilots, but it had never been like what he experienced in Jean’s mind and the Combat Simulator. That he had so little time to mentally prepare for a proper Drift made him anxious, butterflies fluttering and diving in his stomach as he looked up at Jean’s excited face and thought about what he’d see in Armin’s mind.

Predictably, Jean had picked up on his nerves. “Stop working yourself up,” he said, which had become a frequent reminder between the two of them.

Now, he glanced over at Armin, no doubt sensing that his current anxiety wasn’t entirely because of the new arrivals. “I’m guessing you won’t leave it alone even if I tell you to.”

“Would you?” Armin asked, ducking his head as a tech helped him settle his helmet over his head, vision momentarily blurred as the relay gel was released and washed through. It was stuffy inside, bordering on the edge of uncomfortable, but Armin was trying to channel the sense of calm he could see on Jean.

Jean didn’t get a chance to answer before their Drift was initiated. He was ill-prepared for it, tense from their conversation and his own lingering fears that his mind would reject Armin, that whatever he’d done to drag Jean from his nightmare before had been a one-time deal. He was nearly holding his breath, waiting for the awful moment when he pushed Armin away and the Drift would collapse around them.

It never came. Instead, they found each other immediately, their minds slipping past each other, cautious, as the rising tide of memories came faster and faster, too quick to really grasp.

“Relax,” Jean advised quietly and watched as Armin’s eyes fluttered closed.

The connection stretched thin for a moment as Armin struggled to ignore every human instinct to protect and hide the most vulnerable parts of himself. It was reflex, easier to hold on to than to let go, but he knew Armin could do it. If there was anyone that could see the logic in it, it would be Armin.

Armin took a deep breath and opened his eyes on a shallow exhale. Between one heartbeat and the next, the last barriers between them came down one after another until their minds were one in the Drift. It was exhilarating, to have Jean’s presence in his mind and to be in Jean’s mind at once.

To say Jean was surprised at how peaceful the Drift had settled was an understatement, his mind so open to Armin’s own that he knew they’d see some amazing sync scores when they emerged. Their memories pooled together, drawing Armin’s attention. Jean let him sate his curiosity, to push and pull at the constraints of the Drift in a controlled setting, where their lives weren’t in danger and there was no kaiju to fight.

Like looking through a flipbook, they caught staticky glimpses of each other’s memories -- a young Jean hiding his sketchbook from his curious mother, cheeks flushed in embarrassment; Armin, so small, shaking with great heaving sobs in his grandfather’s arms in front of two fresh graves; the first brave steps they took into the Academy, walking right by one another without noticing; the crushing pain of finding Marco’s body; Armin stopping by the Kwoon Room and looking in to watch them train with lingering shame and envy --

“Careful,” Armin murmured, instinctively pulling back when Jean showed a little too much interest in that particular memory, in no particular hurry for him to peer into the part of Armin’s mind he struggled with every day. He felt the mental equivalent of Jean shrugging. He wanted to speak to him, but it was too difficult to form the words in the Drift. Armin knew it would come with practice, but he was a little frustrated that even this would need work and more work, just like everything else.

Slowly, carefully, like balancing on a tightrope, they remained in stasis in the Drift for a few minutes longer until it was turned off and the connection faded away like the tide receding. They both exhaled in unison,

It was quiet between them as the techs helped them out and stripped them off their suits, but not uncomfortable, merely contemplative. As they pulled on their uniforms, Armin asked, “Was that okay?”

It took Jean a second to realize that Armin was still doubting their Drift compatibility. He wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, but Jean settled for saying, “Let’s go look at the results.”

Armin’s face was drawn, hesitant, but Jean wanted him to hear it from Petra herself if it was necessary. He knew empirical data was the only thing that would ease this particular insecurity.

As soon as they stepped inside the room from where techs controlled the Drifts, Petra’s face lit up. “That was really good, you two!” She handed over a printout of their synchronized brain waves, neat and steady on a graph that spanned the length of the Drift. The deviations were minimal, most prominent at the beginning, that one point in the middle where Jean had strayed, and at the end as they were pulled apart.

Armin’s mouth went slack with surprise, his cheeks turning red as he finally seemed to realize he had nothing to worry about. Jean slung an arm around his shoulders and said, “No way I’m letting you go now. Looks like you’re stuck with me for good.”

Armin huffed out a laugh almost too quiet to hear, cheeks burning red. “Yeah.”

* * *

Reiner was the one who invited them to a friendly sparring session in the Kwoon Room after dinner. “It’s just us,” he said, gesturing at their table of friends and fellow Rangers. “Nothing serious, just some fun and technique sharing.” He shielded his mouth with his hand and mock whispered, “But not Annie, she just abuses us for her own amusement.”

Without batting an eyelash, Annie flipped her fork and moved to drive it into Reiner’s hand, stopped just short of stabbing him with the tines. Reiner looked over at her wide-eyed and laughed. She shrugged. “Like that, but with the staffs. The usual.”

Armin and Jean shared a look before Jean said, “Uh, sure. We’ll go.”

When they walked through the doors of the Kwoon Room later, it was to see Annie sweep her staff behind Eren’s knees and knock him down. Armin winced in sympathy, but Eren arched his back and leapt to his feet with ease, taking a stab at her stomach. The others were scattered around the edge of the mat, attentive but going through the motions of stretching and preparing for their turn.

“Like I was saying, I don’t like those Sina, Inc. assholes,” Eren said loudly, breathless with the effort of fending off Annie. “Oh hey, Armin!” He paused to smile and wave and Annie shoved the staff right up to his neck, flush against his jugular.

“Four points to two,” Mikasa deadpanned and stepped onto the mat with her own staff in hand.

“Brutal,” Jean muttered, watching warily as Annie cracked her neck and walked off.

“Uh, what about those Sina Inc. assholes?” Armin asked as he hung up his jacket and removed his shoes.

“They cornered us today,” Eren said, gesturing between himself and Mikasa, “and had the balls to question our kill count.” Just the memory of it set Eren seething again, his teeth grit in the image of the snarl he must have given them.

“They implied our Shatterdome has exaggerated the skills of its pilots and maintains a larger Strike Group than it really needs for the number of attacks we fend off,” Mikasa explained to Armin and Jean. Her voice was neutral but her eyes were fiery as she slipped on her fingerless gloves.

The others had stories of their own to share of suspicious encounters with Kenny and the rest of his team around the Shatterdome. Armin felt validated for his interest in their actions, even though he’d yet to share it with anyone beyond Levi and Hanji.

Unfortunately, Bertholdt set them back on track by suggesting they let Jean and Armin go first, since none of them had ever seen them spar. Armin had slightly hoped they’d get away with being spectators, but he should have expected this from their friends.

“Yeah, we’re all curious about you guys,” Connie said, grinning when they both hesitated.

“Come on!” Mina said. “We know how hard you two have been working. Show off a little!” The words set off the louder members of their group, who hollered and nearly pushed them onto the mat in encouragement.

Jean groaned, dragging his feet, but Armin knew he was actually excited to do this, even though Armin’s own stomach suddenly twisted with nerves. As they picked their staffs, Jean glanced over at Armin and said, “You know we don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Armin shrugged, reluctant. “It’s just-- we’ve never had an audience before.”

Jean waggled his eyebrows. “Performance anxiety an issue?”

Armin rolled his eyes and slapped Jean’s shins with his staff, wiping the smirk off of Jean’s face before he could continue that line of teasing. Sasha hooted with laughter and called out, “If it wasn’t cheating, I’d give him a point just for that.”

They faced off on the mat, sliding into their respective stances, staffs held at on angle. Their friends were blissfully quiet, and their attentive faces blurred at the periphery of Armin’s vision, fading away as he took steady breaths and reminded himself to follow his instincts.

Jean moved first, a quick step forward and a jab with his staff that barely grazed the soft underside of Armin’s chin. Armin flinched and scowled as Jean’s lips quirked in a teasing smile. “One-zero. Stop overthinking it.”

Armin raised his staff then, raining down a series of blows that Jean matched step for step. The only sounds Armin could hear were the clacking of their staffs meeting and receding and his own harsh breaths. He brought his staff up and across in a sweeping arch that ended a few centimeters away from Jean’s left ear, the force of it ruffling his hair.

“One-one,” Armin said, grinning at the way Jean squared his shoulders and frowned.

This was like their practice sessions but amplified in intensity with their audience. Jean liked to win, and Armin wasn’t easily won over, not anymore. HIs limbs felt loose and fluid, his mind drawing upon every memory he’d had of sparring. He might not have participated in many, but his keen attention fed him ideas to dodge and evade Jean’s more aggressive moves.

Two-one was a rough blow against his ribs, which knocked the breath out of Armin and sent him reeling to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eren twitch and move like he was about to intervene, old habit, just like Mikasa’s automatic hand on his arm, holding him back. Jean moved carefully around him, watching him shrewdly, and Armin did the predictable, sweeping his staff in an attempt to unbalance Jean.

When Jean dodged it, Armin took advantage of the lapse in his attention to follow up with a swift kick to his legs, knocking him down. Armin rolled over and up, grappling with Jean for a moment before he successfully straddled him, staff held against his throat. “Two-two!”

Jean’s throat worked as he swallowed hard, and Armin eased off the pressure on him, leaning back on his heels. “I never showed you that move,” Jean said, looking at Armin with something like awe and annoyance. “How--”

“I take back what I said before. The Drift is a good teacher.” Armin was still grinning when Jean rolled them over and took another point out of spite.

“You’re infuriating,” Jean sighed when the fight was over, four points to two. Armin had given his best, and it had been miles away from the first tentative training session they’d had weeks ago. He’d improved greatly, and although Jean tried to be irritated that Armin had given him so much trouble, he was just proud.

“You’re a jerk,” Armin said, rubbing at his sore knuckles where Jean had accidentally hit him with more force than necessary, but he still seemed pleased when he looked up at Jean.

Their friends obnoxiously clapped and hollered, which made them both blush.

“A happy accident, indeed,” Annie said quietly as Armin passed off the staff to her. He blinked, surprised at such a kind assessment from her of all people. She settled back into her impassivity, turning to Mina when she tugged at the sleeve of her sweater.

The rest of the night went by in a blur of goodnatured teasing and cajoling. The fights were fast and intense but all in good fun. The more he watched, the more grateful Armin felt that he could be here now, with Jean and the other Rangers, feeling like he stood a chance at equal footing for the first time in his life.

It lasted until Hanji poked their head in, the goggles resting on their head streaked with a mysterious purple goo, and said, “Play time’s over kiddos, the Marshal wants to see you.”

“You’re worried,” Jean observed, giving Armin a sidelong glance as they filed out of the Kwoon Room, sweaty and red-faced.

“Aren’t you? Late night meetings are never any good,” Armin replied, brow furrowing further.

Erwin was standing in front of his desk, staring intently at an assortment of documents. He looked up when they entered and greeted them cordially, the group of them echoing it back nearly in unison. The older Rangers were spread throughout the rest of the office -- Mike and Nanaba, Petra and Oluo, Gunther and Eld -- and their grim expressions drained the remaining exuberance from their group.

“Armin, I have your preliminary research here,” Erwin began, and Armin startled to be addressed directly in front of all his peers. He felt Jean looking at him again, but his own gaze was on Hanji, who shrugged at him. He known Levi and Hanji were planning on relaying everything Armin dug up, but he hadn’t ever imagined such an immediate response

“I was aware that Sina Inc. had been behind the closing of every single Shatterdome we’ve lost so far, but all of this opened my eyes,” he gestured over the array of newspaper clippings and files Armin had amassed.

He looked at each of them in turn, holding their attention with little effort. “I’m sure all of you had noticed the minor malfunctions we’d been having, including the malfunction in one of our Combat Simulators. It was a dangerous attack that exploited several vulnerabilities in our systems and our Jaegers, which we’ve had our Research Division quietly working on with no success. Considering it all began as soon as we refused to stop operating despite the UN’s orders and removal of our funding, I’m sure you can deduce who is responsible.”

A ripple of unease moved throughout the room, expresions shifting between outraged to concerned. “You knew?” Eren whispered when Armin remained neutral.

Armin nodded, mouthing an apology as Erwin began speaking again.

“Their modus operandi is chaos. They break us down from within, even if it means tearing down whoever stands in their way, and at the end, they loot. They take our tech. Already, they’ve begun building the Anti-Kaiju Wall by the remains of the Sydney Shatterdome. Knowing this, I couldn’t let all of you go on ignorantly. All of you are targets, so naturally--”

Levi scoffed, a rude interruption, but he wasn’t far from the mark. The other pilots were already shaking their heads. Petra spoke up, “You know this is basically an insult to all of us.”

Oluo leaned on the chair she was sitting on, trying to look suave as he started to say, “They don’t scare us--” but the effect was ruined when his elbow slipped and he bit his tongue, cursing loudly. Levi rolled his eyes, exasperated, while the rest of them chuckled and Erwin’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.

“You’re saying I’m underestimating all of you.” It was understood that he sent them out to die every time a kaiju attacked, clad in strong mecha but not invincible. “You’d have to treat them as enemies, just as much as the monsters we fight.”

“We can handle it,” Eren said with much bravado. “We’ll keep fighting until we can’t fight anymore. It’s kind of what we all signed up for.” The group murmured their assent, and Armin bit his lip to hide a burgeoning smile, chest tight with the kind of pride that came from being part of such a fearless group.

Levi walked to stand right in front of Erwin and leaned forward, hands on the edge of his desk. “I told you they could all be counted on.”

Erwin smiled, pleased.

Levi faced them then and said, “Watch out for them. They’re gonna be breathing down our necks until we give or they can bully our sponsors out of funding us. Don’t give them an inch.” It went unsaid what they would do to prevent attacks on their Shatterdome the likes of which had devastated the others, but the meeting left them all with the understanding that this was one battle that would be like weathering a storm and rebuilding in the aftermath of the damage, inevitable in its advance but ultimately survivable. Or at least, that was the hope Armin held.

Sensing Armin’s lingering unease as they walked back to their rooms, Jean said, “You know they’re not gonna win, not with us. There’s no way the public will approve of Jaegers being used for construction when the kaiju come knocking.”  
Armin came to a halt, struck with a sudden fear he hadn’t felt since he began Drifting with Jean on a regular basis. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten what had brought them together in the first place, but he’d been distracted, training and sharing Jean’s dream of a Jaeger. “That’s the problem, Jean. They haven’t even made their first official move. How and when? We can predict the kaiju attacks to a certain degree, but these people…”

Jean looked back at Armin and whatever he saw had him backtracking urgently. “Hey,” he said, gently touching Armin’s chin to tilt his face up when Armin wouldn’t look at him. “When, or if, it happens, we’ll deal with it. Alright?”

Armin took a step closer and Jean wrapped his arms around him, drawing him in. It was instinctive, giving comfort where comfort was sought, but it also felt right, Armin’s face tucked against his neck and his warm breath on his skin. “Alright, I won’t overthink it,” Armin mumbled, and Jean smiled into his hair.

* * *

A blaring alarm startled a sleeping Armin, yanking him back from the deep rest he’d fallen into. Tears in his eyes, heart pounding, he was disoriented for a moment, unsure of where he was, before Jean’s concerned face came into view.

“You okay?” he asked, touching the back of Armin’s hand.

Armin took a deep breath and turned his hand over to lace his fingers with Jean’s, closing his eyes as he took a moment to find his voice. “Nightmare,” he replied, voice still sleep rough.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the quiet in the forgotten lounge they’d discovered on the third floor of the Academy had relaxed him until the words of his book were blurring before his eyes and then he hadn’t been able to keep them open anymore. His waking hours had lengthened now that their training had taken on a more urgent quality. Every other moment he wasn’t with Jean, he spent with Hanji, researching their enemy under the guise of an involved K-science project.

Jean frowned and shifted, his knees bumping into Armin’s, the table they’d chosen just too small for them, but the closeness was welcomed. He leaned across and gently wiped at Armin’s face with his sleeve. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Armin shook his head but gave Jean a small smile for the kind gesture. He let go of Jean’s hand to retrieve his book where he’d abandoned it on his lap. Overhead, the alarm fell silent and a calm voice alerted them to a kaiju making landfall in ten minutes.

Their reprieve from the world had only lasted a couple of hours, but it’d been much needed. Jean had caught Armin nodding off into his dinner and insisted they cancel their nightly session in the Combat Simulator and take a break. But the rest of the world hadn’t gotten a similar chance.

“I think Eren and Mikasa headed out as support for Petra and Oluo,” Jean informed him, before he could even ask if he knew. Sometimes it was eerie how Jean seemed to know what he was thinking, but more often it was a comfort.

“I want to meet them when they come back,” he said, standing up. “Come with me?”

“Yeah, of course.” Jean stood with him, gathering the loose sheets he’d been drawing on and stuffing them into his sketchbook. Armin caught a glimpse of Jaeger tech -- a drivesuit design and the intricate gears of a Jaeger arm -- and what looked like -- him? “Keep those wandering eyes to yourself, Armin,” Jean teased, and Armin averted his gaze then, blushing at the thought of Jean sketching him while he slept. Although their Drifts had taught Armin that he’d been drawing since he was young and found peace in it, he was still very private with his work, and Armin took care not to pry when they were in each other’s heads.

Their walk to Mission Control to check in on their friends’ status was leisure, until they passed one tech and then another, outright running from the room and shouting orders into walkie talkies. “Standard procedure,” Jean said, uncertain, but their pace quickened, down a hallway and then round the bend until they pushed through the doors and stepped into chaotic upheaval.

“What’s happening?” Armin asked the nearest tech, unable to keep the fearful urgency from his voice.

The tech glanced at Armin with a look of despair. “We don’t know! Our systems are glitching.”

The room’s power surged with a crackle of electricity, all of the consoles flickering and launching into a reboot. Beside him Jean cursed, and Armin clutched at his hand, trying to anchor himself from the anxious flood of memories that threatened to send him into a panic attack.

At the front of the room, Levi barked into his headset as the dot on the radar moved inexorably toward the coast, where their Strike Team evidently stood frozen, defenseless.

Armin felt his heart lurch into his throat as Mikasa’s voice came on over the comm, audible to the whole room, “Our Jaeger has stopped responding to our movements, Mission Control.”

“We’re literally sitting ducks out here!” Eren yelled, an edge of fear in his voice. “What the hell is going on?!”

“Our Drift is unstable, and our Jaeger unresponsive, Chief,” Petra reported.

Levi took a moment to think, his sharp eyes narrowed as he stepped back from his useless console. He turned around and spoke to the room at large. “Launch an emergency rescue. Deploy a helicopter to bring them back.”

Petra began talking again, a steady stream describing all the effects they were experienced. Her voice hitched and ebbed, but she urged them to take note, that this was an attack on them, not an internal error. “We will find who is responsible,” she said, low and promising.

At the front of the room, the digital HUD loudly informed them that the kaiju was less than a mile away from the coast and the inoperable Jaegers. Petra fell silent for a moment before she said, “Levi, when it comes for us, remotely detonate our power source.”

“That’s my girl,” Oluo breathed, his voice strained with pain. “Least we can do is turn this shitty situation around, right?”

“No.” Levi’s reply was immediate, firm. “That’d be wasting a valuable Jaeger.”

Oluo laughed. “This is an old model. You’ve got a younger, better looking one coming in soon.”

Levi’s gaze cut over to Armin and Jean, brief. Petra spoke up, “And strong too. You guys will be fine.”

Armin closed his eyes. He could almost see Petra, hear her as if she were standing in the room with them, saying goodbye. If there was a God, he would let their deaths be swift, cushioned by the memories crowding their Drift, lifesigns there and gone in the blink of an eye. Not drawn out and extended, not where Armin could hear their labored breathing, their cries for help, for each other, not --

He took a gasping breath and turned to hide his face against Jean’s chest, clutching the front of shirt with a grip tight enough to tear fabric. He couldn’t look at Jean, not now, not when he was trembling where Armin was pressed against him, swaying in a silence that spoke volumes.

“Hundreds of thousands will die, Levi,” Oluo said, uncharacteristically serious. “Didn’t we say we’d keep fighting until we couldn’t?”

Levi stood silent, clenching and unclenching his fists in utter frustration. His expression wavered for a moment, before he seemed to steel himself and seal his emotions somewhere deep inside. “Understood,” he bit out.

It was a Category 3 kaiju and it was furious. It burst from the sea and lunged, narrowly missing the approaching rescue team. It landed on all fours and roared, flaring two rows of nasty spikes along the length of its spine. Solar Dynamic was right there, just within reach, and it took a swipe at the Jaeger, which lurched uselessly under its strength. In an ordinary battle, Petra and Oluo would have immediately aimed for the common weak spots with their plasma cannon, using the small stature of their Jaeger to slip inside its defences and avoid any possible corrosive projectiles. Now, they were helpless, stuck.

Amidst the noise, the computer declared a critical systems failure in its impassive voice. As the kaiju ripped an arm clean off their Jaeger, Petra screamed, “Levi! Levi, do it!”

“Fuck!” Levi’s fingers sped over the keyboard at his console, pulling up the emergency menu with a swipe of his finger through the projected display. He paused, staring at the ETA for the rescue team, calculating how long it would take to send another Jaeger team out (already on it, but still too long).

Another horrifying noise filled the room, the crunch of mental crushed like plastic in the monster’s claws, the kaiju gouging out a corner of the Conn-Pod. In the space of one heartbeat and the next, Oluo flatlined on screen, dead, but all they could hear was Petra, crying out for Oluo in a steady litany of grief until she took a shuddering breath and pleaded, “ _Levi_.”

Levi stopped hesitating.

The force of the explosion tore through the kaiju, but it wasn’t enough to kill it, resilient beast that it was. It rose from the water, dripping its toxic blue into the sea, still roaring, even as the pieces of Petra and Oluo’s Jaeger collapsed into the bay. Levi adjusted his headset and repeated his order to the team on the other side, “Evacuate Crimson Vengeance. Don’t let that kaiju get to shore.” His words were clipped, icey, promising pain to whoever hindered the success of the mission.

Jean tightened his grip on Armin when Armin started to cry, tears soaking the front of his shirt. “Let’s go, c’mon, no more of this,” Jean said, fighting against the grief threatening to choke him. He had to get Armin out of here. If Armin heard Eren and Mikasa die, he wouldn’t survive the experience intact. Jean knew that to be true, and he was afraid, he was so selfishly afraid. It was a wordless struggle between them, pulling Armin toward the door, urging him to leave.

The Marshal swept by them as they left, followed by the Sina Inc. team, like a group of vultures come to prey. What struck at Jean’s heart was the sight of a satisfied smirk on Kenny’s face as he strolled into the room and took in the chaos, like a Horseman of the Apocalypse surveying his work.

* * *

Armin stood still as a statue against the window that took up the far wall of Eren and Mikasa’s hospital room. His figure was illuminated each time lightning struck in the storm raging outside. Last they’d heard, it was making cleanup and recovery difficult, so the teams were making slow progress in collecting the remains of the kaiju for transport to the K-Science Lab.

Jean paused at the door to stare at him for a moment, pained that Armin felt so out of reach. His own grief had settled somewhere in his gut, heavy and cold, so he had kept moving, helping the crew in the launch bay, lugging Jaeger parts until he felt Armin had had enough time alone with Eren and Mikasa. He didn’t want to stay away anymore, not when he still felt like he could unravel if he let his thoughts wander too far away. So he decided to focus on making sure Armin remembered to take care of himself while he worried about his best friends.

“Here,” Jean said and held out a cup of coffee to Armin, who took it gratefully. Armin tried to smile but it fell short, emerging a grimace that he hid with a sip of the warm drink. “Take a seat.” He pulled up a chair in between Eren and Mikasa’s beds, and Armin let him guide him to it, hand on his back.

“Thanks,” he said quietly, not quite meeting his eyes. Jean understood the vulnerability well, so he just nodded and patted his shoulder.

Mikasa sat watching them and sipping at some apple juice through a straw. Eren was blissfully silent, and although his vital signs and brain waves were stable, he was still being fed a steady drip of painkillers that kept him docile. Both of their arms were wrapped in bandages, but Jean could see the circuitry burn peaking out from the collar of the hospital gown Mikasa wore. The two of them would have the scars forever, jagged electrical lines on their backs and down their arms often only seen on the bodies of dead Rangers, if their bodies were ever recovered at all.

Eren and Mikasa escaped having their Jaeger torn to shreds by the skin of their teeth. Out of the entire rescue team, it was Mike and Nanaba who reached the kaiju first, slamming into its side just as it turned from the wreckage of Solar Dynamic to focus on Crimson Vengeance. In a combination of brute force and a skillful use of their plasma cannon, they destroyed it, until it was just a smear in the water, toxic contamination a forgotten aside..

“You two were lucky,” Jean said, dragging his own chair and settling down next to Armin. He sat close enough so their elbows touched, a simple point of contact that said, I’m here.

“Fuck luck,” Eren mumbled.

“We should have known,” Armin said, hunching in on himself pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead. “We were warned and we still _thought_ \--” He broke off with a shuddering sigh.

“We kept fighting, like we said we would,” Eren said, struggling to sit up against the tangle of his IV lines.

“We knew the risks,” Mikasa added, and she gave Eren a look that made him settle back against his pillows with a frustrated sigh.

“Well, our knowledge didn’t mean a thing this time. They were still one step ahead,” Jean said. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There is.”

The four of them jumped, startled by Levi’s arrival. In the span of a few hours, since the last time they’d heard Petra’s voice, broken and scared, Levi seemed to have hardened. Where Armin had stood frozen, caught in the tight grasp of his grief and fear, Levi was deadly, mouth set in a grim scowl. “You shouldn’t be discussing this so openly. You never know who could be listening.”

All of them balked at the thought, but Levi just shook his head, dismissive. “Erwin wants to see you two,” he gestured for Armin and Jean to stand. “You’re up.”

* * *

Jean and Armin wore matching expressions of awe as they stood at the base of their Jaeger. They had caught glimpses of it before, during the construction process, whenever Jean could sneak them past Pixis and into the hangar using his engineering clearance. But the fractions they’d seen of it were nothing compared to it without mechanics hanging off of it. For a moment, the two of them could pretend that they were normal Rangers, the sharp knife of grief and anxiety dulled by the breathless excitement of finally accomplishing a dream.

“It looks just like your drawings,” Armin said, and Jean was pleased that he’d noticed, that he remembered the details from the few times Jean had let him flip through his sketchbook.

Their Jaeger was the first in a new generation, Mark V, a decision made by Marshal Smith and Pixis in light of recent events. It was smaller than even Crimson Vengeance and carried a smaller artillery but was outfitted with a stronger power source and a higher order of circuitry, which meant a better connection to their nervous systems to allow for fine-tuned movements with less energy expenditure.

Besides their speed and higher defense, it was created to have a greater measure of control over the Drift and the balance between pilots and machine. The idea had come from Armin, who’d worked with Hanji and Petra to develop the finer details of their Jaeger, in hopes of shoring their defenses against outside attack. It’d never been a consideration before a few months ago, but in light of recent events, Armin was glad they had taken his concerns seriously.

“We wanted you to see it. In a few days, you’ll have a practice run in the bay.” The Marshal stood a few steps away from them, his one arm behind his back in an echo of a position that must have been habit. He looked up at the Jaeger with a calculating expression.

Armin turned to face him. “Our orders?”

“For now? Nothing. A company like Sina Inc. won’t be brought down by allegations. We’ll need to draw them out.”

“You have a plan?”

Erwin nodded sharply but didn’t elaborate. Armin raised his eyes to the Jaeger again. Their Jaeger. He couldn’t stop staring at it, equal parts thrilled and scared. “Does it have a name?” He didn’t know how this worked and hadn’t thought to ask Jean before, his Jaeger an afterthought after recent events. It felt unreal even then, casting its massive shadow over everyone below it in the hangar.

“Petra suggested we let you two have the honors,” Erwin responded, a personal sadness in the downturn of his mouth.

Jean made a small noise of surprise, and he nearly crumbled right then and there, but he held it together because of the Marshall’s presence. “That’s… thank you, sir,” he managed. “What do you think, Armin?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” was all his co-pilot said, thoughtful.

Later, after leaving the Shatterdome and their Jaeger behind, after finally being kicked out of the hospital, Jean and Armin had forgone returning to their rooms. Neither of them was eager to be alone, not when the events of the afternoon were still a freshly bleeding wound. They were curled up in the same corner they’d been mere hours before, which seemed like a lifetime ago. Jean had picked up his sketchbook again, listlessly drawing, dissatisfied when none of the pieces he began in fits and starts held even a little bit of resemblance to Petra.

Next to him, Armin was staring at his book without really seeing the words, the distance in his gaze a little haunted. The heavy silence persisted between them until Armin suddenly looked up at exclaimed, “Event Horizon!"

“What?”

“Event Horizon. Our Jaeger. What do you think?”

Jean thought for a moment, caught up in the image of a black hole inexorably pulling in the matter of the universe, and then he thought of the two of them, a force to be reckoned with, no matter anyone’s standards. “I really like it,” he finally said, feeling inadequate in his assessment, but Armin’s small pleased smile was encouraging. “Event Horizon sounds pretty intimidating.”

“Eren’s going to be disappointed though,” Armin continued, and Jean frowned, confused. “He really wanted us to use the word ‘stallion’ in there somewhere.”

Armin laughed at Jean’s momentarily outraged face, and he didn’t even dodge the wad of discarded sketch paper Jean threw at him, which bounced right off his upturned nose.

The silence didn’t weigh as much after that, even if their excitement felt hollow now. Armin went back to staring at his book, until his breathing evened out and his head drooped down onto Jean’s shoulder. It brought Jean out of his own sightless, aimless activity, and grounded him in the present, in the warmth of Armin sitting so close to him. He shifted then, moving to put his arm around Armin, and leaned his head back with a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Jean whispered, and he wasn’t even sure who he was saying it to.

* * *

Petra and Oluo’s funerals were scheduled for the following day. The kaiju had done extensive damage, leaving nothing of their Jaeger but spare parts. There were no bodies to bury, so it was merely a formality, a wake to pool their collective grief in one room and mourn. Jean couldn’t go.

He deliberately made himself scarce because he didn’t want to explain to anyone why he couldn’t show up to say goodbye to his mentor. Now that he’d stopped moving, that he wasn’t helping in the hangar or making sure Armin got another meal in, his own thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. It was bad enough her final desperate pleas had seared his mind, but he didn’t want to face an empty casket and ruminate on how the number of people the kaiju had taken from him had was getting greater, and now he had more to lose than ever.

It was as if the mere distant thought of Armin summoned him to Jean’s door. His knock was soft, hesitant; Sasha had likely warned him that Jean wasn’t coming, especially after Jean had told her to go away less than politely when she’d passed by to check on him. He knocked again, and Jean closed his eyes, hoping he’d go away but also hoping he’d come in.

There was a moment of silence and then the telltale sounds of a lock being picked. His door swung open, revealing an irate Armin, who said, “You really wouldn’t get up to let me in?”

Jean merely grunted and turned his face into his pillow. “I’m not feeling well today,” he mumbled, as close to the truth as he felt like he could get without making an embarrassment of himself in front of Armin.

“I don’t think any of us are,” Armn replied, sitting down on the edge of Jean’s bed. His hand hovered over him for a second before settling in his hair. Jean half expected him to ruffle his hair, like Jean loved to do to rile him up, but instead Armin moved his hand in a soothing motion, scratching at the short hair of his undercut in a way that spoke volumes of their comfort with each other. Jean knew that a month ago, without Drifting, Armin wouldn’t have known how to interpret the easy physical affection that had developed between the two of them.

For once, Armin wasn’t pinning him under his knowing gaze; his attention roamed over the rest of Jean’s room, waiting.

“It's just--" Jean sighed. "I don't like funerals. Bad memories." It goes without saying that he’s thinking of Marco, and the long string of funerals that followed after his, with a whole city in mourning.

"That makes two of us." Armin spoke softly now, like anything above a certain decibel would shatter the fragile vulnerability of the moment. He looked lost in thought for a moment before he said, "Can I stay with you?"

He asked like it was his idea and not Jean's to hide from the world for a moment, to hold his pain close to his chest because sharing it with others would make it too real. Jean was grateful for the kindness, a sudden lump in his throat making it harder to do much more than nod.

“It’s starting in a few minutes,” Jean said. “You should go now if you don’t want to be late.”

Armin stopped running his fingers through Jean's hair and said, "I’m not going anywhere. Move over."

Jean blinked, taken aback for a moment, before he understood what Armin was asking. He scooted back, making room for Armin. Armin shucked his jacket, tossed it over the back of the nearest chair, and kicked off his boots, before he climbed into bed with Jean. It was nearly too small for them, their knees and elbows knocking together, Armin's breath ghosting warm over his neck.

He could feel the tension in Armin, in the way he held himself carefully, the wide eyed gaze he turned up toward Jean. "Is this-- I could--" Armin started, hands fluttering between them, unsure.

“This is fine,” Jean said, stilling the movement of his hands by taking hold of them. He meant to let go, to let Armin settle in more comfortably, but he didn’t. He held Armin’s calloused hands in his own and ran his thumbs over his knuckles, resisting the urge to kiss each one. Armin’s blond hair fanned out on their shared pillow and tickled his nose, but he couldn’t even bring himself to complain.

For once, Jean wasn’t compelled to speak, to explain away how important this was to him, the closeness between them, born of hardship and the subliminal space between their minds. Instead, gratitude welled up in him, and he whispered, “Thanks.”

Armin smile, a brief upward quirk of his lips, and said, “I know you’d do the same for me,” and Jean knew it to be true.

Slowly, they curled in toward each other, two commas in a tight space, until their foreheads touched. Their breathing slowed to an even steady rate, and the warmth and peace between them lulled Jean to sleep.

* * *

“Hey, Jean! Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you?” Eren pushed at his shoulder, causing him to stumble into the workbench and nearly drop the drill he was holding right onto his drivesuit’s chest plate. Jean caught himself in time, spinning on his heel to tell Eren to fuck off when another jagged pulse of pain throbbed at the back of his head. Jean set the drill down next to the pieces of his suit, intricate circuitry at the mercy of his ingenuity. He leaned on the table, careful not to jostle any pieces, and breathed through the panic rising in his chest that didn’t feel anything at all like his own.

Instinct directed his thoughts toward Armin, who was always at the forefront of his mind nowadays, the first person he looked for when he entered a room, whose opinion he asked before anyone else’s. It suddenly got harder to breathe. Jean recoiled from the very real sensation of brushing against Armin’s mind outside of the Drift, like he’d burned his hand on a stovetop.

“It’s Armin,” he blurted out, opening his eyes in time to see the color drain from Eren’s face.

“What? How do you--” Eren stopped and shook his head, as if realizing he was asking the wrong question. “Where is he?”

Jean’s own mind felt scattered, the panic-that-wasn’t-his-own making it hard to rationalize, but he remembered where he was supposed to be. He set off without waiting for Eren to follow, driven by his fear for Armin.

He skidded to a halt in front of the double doors that led to the K-Science lab and hesitated for a second before he pushed them open. The smell hit him first, then the heat.

The lab was on fire.

He could barely see through the thick miasma of smoke, and he retreated back through the doors and into the clean air of the hallways outside just as the fire alarms began to blare overhead. The first person stumbled out of the lab, their white coat surreally pristine. Others followed soon after, an assortment of scientists and lab techs, dazed and confused, but none had the blond hair Jean was looking for.

He did recognize Moblit when he emerged from the billowing smoke, and he was there to hold him up when Moblit’s knees gave out on him.

“What happened?” Jean asked, helping him limp further from the lab entrance to lean against the far wall.

Moblit coughed and shook his head. “Didn’t see what caught fire,” he rasped. “But it spread too fast to save anything.”

“Where’s--” Jean didn’t get to ask him any more questions because the emergency response personnel began to arrive in droves and one of them snatched Moblit away from him for triage. Jean cursed and looked around over the swell of people now crowding the hallway, blending into a blur. The number of people leaving the lab had slowed to a trickle, most of them now wet from the activated sprinkler system. It wasn’t a comfort because no matter who he asked, no one could give him a straight answer about Armin.

“Armin!” he called out, trying to make himself heard over the noise in the hallway. He elbowed his way past the crowd blocking the entrance to the lab, looking into every sweaty and soot-streaked face he passed. “Armin!” A dizzying sensation of deja vu struck him, and he swayed, suddenly nauseous.

_This isn’t the same_ , he told himself, digging his fingers into the palms of his hands hard enough for it to hurt, to stave off the panic threatening to overwhelm him.

Jean stopped on the edge of the mess and recalled the moment earlier when he’d felt Armin so clearly. He’d never put much stock into the idea that a weak link remained between pilots after Drifting, but if there’d ever been a moment in his life when he needed it to be true, it was now. He thought of Armin, thought of where he could be, and he felt a sharp relief when Armin’s mind, his consciousness, reached back for him.

He turned around and saw the double doors of the lab swing open, and Armin emerged, helping an injured Hanji, both of them soaked through from the sprinklers. Armin looked up and saw Jean right away and smiled. Jean was sure he said his name, even though he didn’t see his mouth move to form the sounds.

He was at his side in a second and put an arm around Hanji’s waist to ease the burden on Armin. Armin said, “Be careful, it’s their arm, I think it’s broken.”

Hanji was unusually quiet, mouth a thin line, expression strained with pain. “I’m alright,” they said with a false brightness. They glanced over their shoulder at the lab. “But I’m going to eviscerate the assholes that _dared_ to—”

Moblit intervened just as Hanji began to really get riled up and had them engulfed in medical attention with a sharp call for help. An EMT tried to offer aid to Armin but he waved them away, only accepting the blanket set over his shoulders and a bottle of water for his aching throat.

“You need to get checked for smoke inhalation damage,” Jean insisted, moving close to help him open the bottle because Armin’s hands were trembling too hard for him to manage it.

“Later. There are others worse than I am.” His voice was faint, words trembling like it was an effort for him to speak.

“Jesus, Armin,” Jean said and pulled Armin into a hug. He didn’t care that his clothes were getting wet, not when Armin was alive and warm in his arms, safe. “What took you so long?”

“Hanji was hurt, I couldn’t leave them.” Armin wiped at his watery eyes, still stinging from the smoke. “I knew you were looking for me, though. I was so scared, I thought you were going to run right into the fire.”

Jean huffed out a humorless laugh. “I would have,” he admitted, brushing Armin’s wet hair off his face. “What I felt… I just thought…” The words to describe the pain and fear he’d felt, both his own and distinctly not, escaped him. He settled for leaning in, touching his forehead to Armin’s in an echo of their quiet moment in his room from the week before. Armin’s breath hitched, unsteady, but Jean could see that Armin was smiling, and he knew that this was okay.

He pulled back and settled a hand on the small of Armin’s back, adjusting his slipping blanket over his shoulders as he began guiding him through the crowd. “Let’s get you out of here. Maybe we can beat everyone to medical and get you out in time for dinner.”

Armin sighed, “That’s not likely,” but he still let Jean guide him.

* * *

Hours later and Armin still felt like he had adrenaline knocking around his body, a restless rhythm in his veins that set his teeth on edge. He hadn’t been close to death, not really, not as close as he’d been when he was a child and a kaiju blew through his town, but when he closed his eyes he felt the heat of the fire.

He’d known immediately that they wouldn’t find any evidence, nothing concrete to prove who’d set the fire, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it’d been arson, a deliberate attempt to set them back. The entire medical ward had been abuzz with rumors and lamentations over ruined experiments, how entire kaiju samples carefully cultivated by their field team had burnt to a crisp.

He had nearly lost weeks of work, but luckily he’d listened to Hanji’s advice to continuously back up to a separate server from the one used by the K-Science team. It was likely that they had known or suspected, otherwise why target the lab? Unless they just wanted to cause widespread damage and discredit them all at once. It was infuriating, but the least he could do was be grateful that no one had died.

Armin didn’t tell Jean how lucky he was that his research had kept him in a corner of the lab away from the chemicals and hoods, where vials and beakers had blown out from the intensely burning heat caused by an accelerant. He had probably pieced it together himself as they walked past the beds where nurses were pulling shards of glass out of faces. Jean had reflexively pulled Armin closer and turned his face away, expression set in a permanent mixture of worried and angry. Armin knew the feelings well, but helplessness was the one that haunted him now.

After a round of with an oxygen mask, Armin was sent away with short term medication to offset any possible inflammation of his lungs and instructions to come back if he experienced anything from a whole list of symptoms. Jean very solemnly promised the doctor he’d keep an eye out, and Armin had to stifle a laugh at how endearing it was.

Jean wouldn’t have left his side at all if he hadn’t been called away by Pixis to pick up the mess he’d left behind when he’d gone running off to the lab. “You left your drivesuit in pieces, genius, and you kinda need it.” Eren was the smug messenger, although he took a moment after delivery to fuss over Armin as well, and with the two of them in the room, Armin started to feel smothered.

“ _Go_ ,” he urged Jean, nearly pushing him down the hallway. “Just find me after you’re done.” Jean had gone reluctantly, looking back at Armin like he expected him to go up in smoke when he wasn’t looking.

Armin had been alone since, grateful for the peace that came with solitude. He was tired but not enough to retreat to his room, so he’d found a less traveled spot of the catwalk above the hangar where Event Horizon was stored and had been sitting there for close to an hour.

"Looks like you weren’t so far from me after all."

Armin looked up, startled out of his sightless reverie by the very subject of his thoughts, who stood just a few feet away. Jean’s expression softened into a smile as he approached Armin, wordlessly asking if he could join him with a gesture. Armin nodded and patted the spot next to him before turning his attention back to their Jaeger, which was illuminated under bright fluorescent lights for the night crew finalizing the paint on its exterior.

Jean sat down cross-legged, jostling Armin as he did so with obvious amusement at Armin’s halfhearted protests.

“Someone’s overly chipper,” Armin commented dryly, frowning at how hoarse his words were. He sounded on the verge of losing his voice, which he was used to with drawn out colds, but it’d be a first from a fire.

“I finished the drivesuit upgrades you recommended, and you survived a fire set by those fuckers, so I’m feeling pretty good right now,” Jean said, leaning back to rest his weight on his hands.

A comfortable silence fell between them, interrupted only by the well-known sounds of Jaegers being repaired: drills buzzing, metal clanging, with the occasional good-natured curse thrown in. Armin sat with his arms around his legs, chin resting on his knees, and he cast sidelong glances at Jean when he thought he wasn’t looking. The past couple of months had changed their friendship, elevating them from little more than friends of friends with a mutual understanding to where they were now: a synchronized team with an awareness of each other. Armin was scared of it sometimes, that Jean knew him well enough to understand his silences and the minute shifts in his expressions and even his worst attempt at jokes.

Which was why he wasn’t at all surprised that their minds kept finding each other, even outside the Drift. Armin had known Eren and Mikasa could do it, even if they didn’t like talking about it. He’d seen it long ago, the way they clicked the moment they started Drifting. Since then, Armin had wondered what it would be like and now he knew that it was like falling and having someone else there to catch you when you least expected it.

Armin tentatively reached out for Jean across the bond he knew was there but couldn’t visualize. It was a little like stumbling in the dark now that he wasn’t just generally projecting his fear and relief, but he knew when he struck true by the ripple that shivered through Jean.

Jean glanced over at him, his expression neutral. A beat and then Armin felt him reaching out in return. It was easy to let him in, although it wasn’t as intense as a real Drift, but Armin felt his warm presence at the back of his mind and he felt safe.

“This is—” Armin stopped and smiled, focusing on projecting it instead.

“Weird but also really nice, essentially?” Jean said, and he laughed when Armin nodded. “Earlier, it was—” Jean cut himself off, suddenly embarrassed.

“What?” Armin moved to sit cross-legged, facing Jean. “Tell me. You left all your rights to modesty back in the Drift.”

Jean leaned forward and grabbed one of Armin’s hands. “I felt it here,” Jean said, pressing Armin’s hand to his chest, where his heart beat fast underneath Armin’s fingers. “Like I was being pulled toward you, like I could find you anywhere, even in a crowd with my eyes closed.”

Armin stared at him, his own heart galloping in his chest, and for once didn’t know what to say. Jean flushed and averted his gaze. “Forget it, it’s stupid,” he mumbled, releasing Armin’s hand. But Armin didn’t move his hand away.

“I’m glad this only makes you slightly more transparent than before,” Armin said, lips quirked in a small smile.

Jean rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, smartass, than what am I thinking of now?”

“I think I’ve got a pretty good guess.”

“Oh yeah? Hit me with your best shot.”

Armin moved on impulse, without a chance to second guess himself. He leaned forward to close the distance between them and, with a touch of his fingers to Jean’s chin, pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. It was a moment frozen in time, long enough for Armin to start to doubt he’d read Jean’s emotions right, but then Jean surged up against him, taking Armin’s face in his hands to slot their lips together in a deeper kiss. It was the last piece of their puzzle falling into place, the unnamable affection that had built up over their time together finally understood.

Armin couldn’t stop smiling long enough to get a proper taste of Jean, but he was gratified to see a similar grin on Jean’s face when they pulled apart.

“That doesn’t count,” he breathed, touching Armin’s lips absently. Armin pressed a kiss to his fingertips and then to corner of his mouth, still smiling. “You’re cheating,” Jean protested, laughing, running his hands through Armin’s hair, the smell of smoke still clinging to him. He cupped the back of his neck and pulled him closer, until they were kneeling together, arms around each other, minds intertwined, close but eager to get closer still.

* * *

The next time the two of them were called in to see the Marshall, they brought a finalized plan in tow. In the aftermath of the fire, Petra and Oluo’s deaths still hanging over them, Armin had forgone sleep to finish the work he’d nearly lost in the lab, and Jean had kept awake out of solidarity.

Just that morning, Rod Reiss, Vice President of Sina Inc., conferenced in a special announcement to the base as a whole, expressing his regrets over the recent hardships the Shatterdome had faced. He assured them he was confident it wouldn’t affect their regular operation, but it sounded more like a backhanded threat. Kenny and his team stood below their boss’s projected face and smiled like they were in on a really good joke.

“We’re done playing this game,” Levi said to Erwin before he let Armin and Jean explain what they’d been working on throughout the time they’d spent preparing to be Rangers.

“Jean and I are going to be the bait that will allow us to trap Sina Inc.,” Armin began. On the Marshall’s own console, he pulled up the research he’d done to piece together a picture of circumstantial evidence. From Jaeger mishaps to outright dead Rangers at previous Shatterdomes, the information he’d found put together the truthful image of Sina Inc., not as an altruistic entity, but a greedy corporate scam determined to sacrifice humanity for their own gain.

“This won’t be enough,” Erwin said as he scrolled through the material..

“I know. Look at this.” He switched over to the coding he’d been working on. “I dug deeper and was able to rebuild the virus they used to attack us and other teams at previous Shatterdomes. It was made to self-destruct, but I’ve reworked it to our favor and created something else altogether. When they attack again, we’ll be able to reverse the attack and then trace it once their defenses are down. I’d say catching them in the act will be evidence enough, no?”

Erwin nodded slowly, intrigued. “Their MO is to attack when Jaegers are most vulnerable. I won’t risk losing another team.”

“It won’t be a problem if we only make them _think_ we’re in the middle of a kaiju attack,” Jean said, grinning.

In light of losing the lab, Hanji had thrown themself into the mathematics of the Breach and the science of predicting kaiju arrivals through the tear in their world. According to Hanji’s calculations, the next kaiju attack won’t be for another week, and it was likely to bring an escalation in the form of a Category 4. They warned there would be a double event in the future, but not this time around.

That was exactly what they wanted to hear.

Faking a kaiju attack was easier than it would seem. It involved a clever bit of uproar from the new K-Science Department, conveniently housed in an empty hangar and within earshot of every Jaeger tech and on-duty Ranger. Jean and Armin were there, of course, scheduled as support for Mike and Nanaba’s Jaeger. Because Eren and Mikasa’s Jaeger was still undergoing repairs, they were replaced by Connie and Sasha, who were entirely too excited to take part in their plan, their grins eager and their enthusiasm characteristic of their dynamic piloting.

The number of people that actually knew about their plan was limited to the Marshall and the Chiefs of the relevant departments, namely Pixis, Levi, and Hanji, plus their active Rangers. The tension that came from the pressure of successfully pulling the wool over Kenny’s eyes went unnoticed in the scattered rush triggered by any kaiju attack. In a carefully coordinated domino of action, the three teams allowed themselves to be swept away to be deployed.

Armin felt like he blinked and missed the transition, because when he checked in again, he was outfitted in his new drivesuit, the polycarbonate armor painted a shiny blue to match their Jaeger. The same nerves that plagued him every time he entered the Combat Simulator wrecked him now, but he kept his hands steady and held on to the same intense determination that had helped him through the past few weeks.

“I have to admit I never imagined our first time taking our Jaeger out would like this,” Jean said as they stepped inside their Conn-Pod.

“Neither did I, but it seems fitting, considering how we began.”

Jean chuckled. “Guess I do owe those bastards some thanks.” He cupped the back of Armin’s neck and touched his forehead to his before stepping up onto the platform for the techs to finish wiring them up to their Jaeger.

Once their helmets were on and the relay gel distributed, their communicators kicked in and they heard Levi’s voice saying, “Pilots ready for drop.” There was a click, followed by the swooping sensation in the pit of their stomachs before their Conn-Pod connected neatly with the rest of Event Horizon.

_“Prepare for neural handshake.”_

For a moment, Jean almost expected to hear the words in Petra’s voice, like he had so many times before while practicing with Armin. It was a disorienting painful moment, right before the Drift swept over him and pulled him into Armin’s mind.

“You okay?” Armin asked, glancing over at him with concern.

“Now I am,” Jean said and grinned when Armin rolled his eyes.

Like an animated flipbook, an amalgam of their memories slipped by, but they remained steady, the space between them untouched by anxiety or even the merest temptation to chase the rabbit. To Jean, it felt like he stood side by side with Armin, close enough to touch, even though in reality they were locked in place a few feet from each other. It was the most stability Jean could recall them ever achieving, which bolstered his faith in them.

“Looking good, Event Horizon. You’ll exit the hangar after Mike and Nanaba.”

They were only a mile from the Shatterdome when Armin and Jean felt the telltale surge of energy in their Jaeger. It skittered under the drivesuits, pinpricks of pain that were dulled by the upgrades to their circuitry. He inhaled sharply and clenched his jaw, bracing himself for the ensuing breakdown of the communication between the two of them and their Jaeger. Just like they’d expected, their viewport screen flickered and showed the same insidious flash of code Armin had broken down, and their Jaeger began to slow down. It was like being weighed down with an anchor.

Ahead of them, Mike and Nanaba’s Jaeger came to a complete stop. As planned, Nanaba came on over their coms and said, “We’re experiencing a malfunction, Chief,” her voice strategically calm. Sasha chimed in with a quick, “Ditto!” and Jean murmured his assent.

“Noted,” Levi responded. “Kaiju makes landfall in fifteen minutes. We’re working on it. Rescue team is being deployed.”

Armin leaned forward and flipped down a keyboard from underneath their dashboard. He pulled up his own code on their digital screen and with a few keystrokes, he set it running. “Okay,” Armin whispered. “Here we go.”

Armin held his breath as the trace unfolded on their screen. He watched intently as his own code fizzled up as it began to work on reversing the thrall that had rendered their Jaegers useless. This was the last time their Jaegers would be so vulnerable, the last time anyone would be able to exploit a weakness in their programming.

“Uh, not to alarm anyone but,” Hanji paused for a moment, seeming to considering their words before just blurting out, “We’re getting weird readings from the breach over here.”

“Haha,” Jean said dryly.

“I’m serious, there’s a pretty little monster being born from it ahead of schedule as we speak.”

Connie and Sasha cursed simultaneously, which would have been amusing in any other situation.

“Alright, get us moving again,” Mike said expectantly.

“I said we’re working on it.” Levi sounded pissed, but that was usually his default setting, so it hard to parse whether that meant they were all screwed or Mission Control really was working on it.

“Actually,” Hanji chimed in. “Make that two little monsters.” They sounded distant, shocked. “My math was right, so what the hell?”

“Oh my God,” Jean breathed, flexing his left arm in hopes of getting a response from his side of the Jaeger, but it remained stock still. He looked over at Armin, who was wide-eyed and pale.

“It’s not complete yet, it’s still running,” Armin said.

“Shut it down,” Levi ordered firmly, but Armin ignored him.

“No! We almost have them.” Armin was agitated now, fingers moving over the keyboard with controlled urgency, desperation fueling his intensity as he scanned the code for the barest hint of the attack’s origins. It was a few minutes of tense silence between Mission Control and the frozen Jaegers, before their screens finally pinged.

Armin reported immediately, speaking urgently, “They’re in the Academy, likely operating from one of the broken Combat Simulators. They’ll have realized what’s happening by now, so they’ll be packing up to leave—”

Levi interrupted him with a tense, “We’ve got it,” just as Hanji reported that the two kaiju were mere seconds away from them, soon to be visible.

The two kaiju emerged from the fog threatening to engulf the coastline, ambling slowly, swinging two sets of clawed arms. They were twins, mutant hybrids that looked like a cross between a gorilla and a reptile, covered in scales that reflected the weak sun rising on the horizon. Open mouths revealed the same glowing interior of every kaiju but these had three rows of jagged teeth.

With fear digging its cold fingers into his heart, Armin’s gaze went distant, the pull of a nightmare memory threatening to drag him under.

_Stay with me_ , Jean thought at him, anchoring with a gentle tug on their bond, amplified in the Drift.

_I’m here._ Armin made the effort to synchronize his breathing with Jean’s and block the remnants of an old terror that burned in furthest corner of his mind.

“If we can just stand our ground for a few minutes,” Armin said. “Our Jaegers should be up and running in time.”

“That’s a big risk,” Sasha stammered.

“No more than two minutes—”

One of the creatures howled, and it was a terrifying sound that made the words stick in Armin’s throat. He had to be right, otherwise all of them were going to die.

“Come on,” Jean muttered, and together he and Armin took a handful of strained steps, listening to the gears stick below their platform.

One of the kaiju was bearing down on them, rows and rows of teeth menacingly poised to rip and tear, when the internal lights of their Jaeger flickered and surged to maximum brightness, the computer suddenly reporting full power.

“Fuck yeah!” Jean shouted as he heard the gears shudder to life below them. His excitement was echoed by the other pilots as their own Jaegers stuttered to life around them, lurching as they took their first heavy steps forward.

“We’ve apprehended the bastards,” Levi announced. “In case that gives you any extra motivation to survive.”

Armin and Jean shared an exhilarated look before they curled their fingers into fists and moved in tandem, grabbing at the kaiju leaning into them, catching it off-guard. They used their smaller stature to drive into it, holding it still long enough for Connie and Sasha to pulled out their crossbow and launch explosive arrows right into the tender underbelly of the monster, its toxic blood sizzling with exposure to the air.

The fog rolling in caught up to them, engulfing them as the monster struggled against their grasp, trying to use its second pair of arms to gouge out a piece of their Jaeger’s chest. They freed a hand to tear at the kaiju’s armor of scales and they fired a shot from their plasma cannon into its back when it looked like they’d gotten through to its skin. In the distance, Mike and Nanaba threw the second kaiju into the water, firing off a dozen shots point blank in an attempt to reduce it to a smear in the ocean, which did little to slow it down.

“Be gentle!” Hanji scolded them over the comms. “I need to harvest some new samples!”

Armin and Jean rolled their eyes before diving back into the fray, aiming to slow down their kaiju as it tried to charge Connie and Sasha and drag them down into the water.

The battle took over an hour and veered dangerously close to the coast and its inhabitants when both kaiju unfurled a set of wings, the kind humans had always imagined on pterodactyls, and took to the air, exhaling a corrosive acid as they did so. Armin ached every step of the way, every single hit the Jaeger took reverberating through their connection, but with Jean beside him spurring them forward, he never once stopped moving.

It wasn’t until the kaiju were dead and their Jaeger was safely back in the hangar for repairs that Jean and Armin got to see the aftermath of their plan. Jean helped him down from the platform, ready to steady him when his unsteady legs nearly buckled beneath him. Armin didn’t even care, relieved laughter spilling forth as he leaned against Jean and reached out to him across their bond and thought, We did it.

Jean closed the physical distance between them with a kiss, quick and hard, a promise for later in his grin as he pulled away. Armin couldn’t stop smiling.

Helmets tucked in the crook of their elbows, they made their way back to the Conn-Pod to drop off their helmets and shed their drivesuits, congratulations raining down upon them from every tech they encountered. But the delight buzzing through the Shatterdome wasn’t just because of the kaiju defeat and their Strike Team’s triumphant return, as one exuberant tech informed them, it was due to the very public arrests being made in the Academy.

It was easy to follow the crowd to the lobby of the Academy, where Marshal Smith stood watch as Kenny and his team were marched out in handcuffs and a contrite UN representative apologized profusely. Someone had pulled up a local channel on the screen normally playing recruitment ads on a loop, and the people around them were entranced by a breaking news report on the corruption behind the Anti-Kaiju Wall Initiative.

Jean said, “Some of that material looks like your research.”

Armin smiled and said, “The Marshal was right, it wouldn’t have stood up in court, but it’s definitely enough to help the media ruin their reputation.”

Jean laughed and pressed a kiss to the top of Armin’s head. “You’re brilliant.”

Rather than embarrassment, Armin just felt warm at the compliment and Jean’s easy affection, and for the first time in a while, he was lighthearted, a feeling that was only amplified as their friends and fellow Rangers made a loud arrival, hollering at the retreating Sina Inc. representatives and running high on the adrenaline rush of another kaiju attack contained. Even Mikasa and Annie looked pleased, reluctant as they were to get pulled into the celebratory chaos by their co-pilots.

It didn’t matter that the countdown was already reset for the next kaiju arrival, that it might be a double or triple event or the end of the world as they knew it. What mattered was this, the moment in between, when Jean could look at Armin and drink in the open happiness on his face and revel in the feedback of elation along their bond. It was the kind of contentment that came from pushing your strength to the limit to pilot a Jaeger and using it to kill a colossal monster. Whatever happened after was irrelevant because they had each other and their combined strength would be enough to overcome it.

As if sensing his thoughts, Armin glanced up at him and his smile seemed to get that much brighter. “We’re okay,” he said, finding Jean’s hands in the chaos and intertwining their fingers.

Jean brought their joined hands up and kissed one of Armin’s knuckles. “Yeah, we are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading & please consider voting in the comments!
> 
> Prompt:"The Eleventh Hour" or "at the last possible moment"  
> Team: AU
> 
> On a scale of 1 to 10:
> 
> 1\. How in character was my fic?  
> 2\. How well did my fic handle the prompt?  
> 3\. Overall enjoyment?
> 
> [Here's a link to my competitor from Team Canon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4561914)!  
> [Please check out the other works for the Jearmin Summer Splash Here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/JearminSummerSplash2015)!
> 
> Voting for this fic ends 8/27/15 at 11:59pm.


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